Mel aner Ties er y t hr o c ertlial us . 
THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER A HOARDER. 
XXYm.,-Mo.S. fa lb, I«7- tMW- 
BY O. P. HAY. 
The woodpeckers are eminently an insect-eating family, 
and their whole organization fits them for gaining access to 
situations where the supply of their normal food is peren- 
nial, if not always abundant. There are, however, in all 
probability, few members of the group that will not, when 
! opportunities are offered, forego their accustomed animal 
: diet and solace themselves on soft fruits and luscious her. 
ries ; and when the blasts blow cold, and the soggy limb is 
frozen hard, and the larva no longer betrays its location by 
its industry, the few woodpeckers of the species which 
brave our Winters, are, no doubt, glad to avail themselves 
of such dry forms of nutriment as grains, seeds of grasses 
and the softer nuts. 
Notwithstanding the many sagacious traits exhibited by 
birds, it is, to judge from the books, rather unusual for 
them to lay up a store of food for a period of scarcity ; and 
yet it i s probably that w hen we have thoroughly learned 
their modes of life many will be found to do this. One 
woodpecker, Melanerpes formiaivorus, a near relative of our 
red-headed woodpecker, has long been known as a hoarder 
of treasures, and an interesting account of its habits is given 
in Baird Brewer and Ridgway’s “ Birds of North America.” 
This species is accustomed to dig small holes in the trunks 
of trees, and to drive into each hole with great force a sin- 
gle acorn. “ Thus the bark of a large pine forty or fifty feet 
high will present the appearance of being closely studded 
with brass nails, the heads only being visible.” It has, by 
some, been denied that these acorns are collected for food ; 
and it is quite probable that many more are stored away 
than are ever eaten. It is even related that these birds 
sometimes hide away in trees collections of small stones. 
But there are evidences that sometimes, at least, the acorns 
are utilized. Instinct probably leads the bird to overdo the 
business of hoarding, just as human reason in a similar 
direction often misleads its possessors. 
Our red-headed woodpecker betrays its kinship to the 
California species by the possession of somewhat similar 
habits. Its propensity for hoarding does not appear to have 
escaped the observation of many persons who make no 
claims to being ornithologists, and yet I find in no scientific 
work that I have been able to consult any notice thereof. 
Gentry, who describes minutely the habits of this species, 
says nothing about this trait. “The Birds of North 
America ” contains no statement concerning the food of the 
species ; and concerning the hoarding habits of the Califor- 
nia woodpecker they are spoken of as being “ very remark- 
able and, for a woodpecker, somewhat anomalous.” 
Along with the great abundance of grains and fruits of 
the past year, there has been, in Central Indiana at least, an 
immense crop of beech-nuts ; and the red-heads have ap- 
peared to be animated with an ambition to make the most 
of their opportunities. Prom the time the nuts began to 
ripen, these birds appeared to be almost constantly on the 
wing, passing from the beeches to some place of deposit. 
They have hidden away the nuts in almost every conceiv- 
able situation. Many have been placed in cavities in par- 
tially decayed trees; and the felling of an old beech is cer- 
tain to provide a little feast for a bevy of children. Large 
handfuls have been taken from a single knot-hole. They 
are often found under a patch of the raised bark of trees, 
and single nuts have been driven into the cracks in bark. 
They have been thrust into the cracks in front gate-posts : 
and a favorite place of deposit is behind long slivers on 
fence-posts. I have taken a good handful from a single 
such crevice. That sharpest of all observers, the small boy, 
early discovered the location of these treasures. In a few 
cases grains of corn have been mixed with beech-nuts, and 
I have found also a few drupes apparently of the wild- 
cherry and a partially-eaten bitter-nut. The nuts may 
often be seen driven into the cracks at the ends of railroad i 
ties ; and, on the other hand, the birds have often been seen 
on the roofs of houses, pounding nuts into the crevices be- 
tween the shingles. In several instances I have observed 
that the space formed by a board springing away from a i 
fence-post, has been nearly filled with nuts, and afterward 
pieces of bark and wood have been brought and driven down 
over the nuts as if to hide them from poachers. These 
pieces of bark are sometimes an inch or more square and 
half an inch thick and driven in with such force that it is 
difficult to get them out. In one case the nuts were cov- 
ered over with a layer of empty involucres. 
Usually the nuts are still covered with the hulls ; but 
here and there, where the crevice is very narrow, these 
have been taken off and pieces of the kernels have been 
thrust in. An examination recently of some of these caches 
showed that the nuts were being attacked by animals of 
some kind. The red-heads are frequently seen in the 
vicinity of these stores and they sometimes manifest great 
impatience at the presence of other birds. That other birds 
and animals of any kind disturb these caches I do not know, 
but it is quite probable that they do. 
Since it might be questioned whether or not the wood- 
peckers use for food the nuts thus stored up, I concluded 
to apply a test that would probably decide the matter. Jan- 
uary 7, after the prevalence for some time of severe weather, 
I shot two red-heads and made an examination of the con- 
tents of their alimentary canal. In the gizzards of both 
were found considerable quantities of the more or less 
broken kernels of what appeared to the unaided eye to be 
beech-nuts. I then made microscopic sections of the pieces 
and compared them with similar sections of beech-nuts, and 
the two sets of sections were identical. The red-headed 
woodpecker certainly eats beech-nuts. In the gizzards 
there was also some kind of hard vegetable matter that I 
could not determine, and some coarse sand; but there were 
no remains of insects. 
The laying up of such abundant stores of food for Winter 
use, in so many places easy of access, and the precautions 
taken to conceal them, all show a high degree of intelli- 
gence in these birds. 
The above observations were made in the village of Irv- 
ington, near Indianapolis, Ind . — The Auk. 
