BIRDS CONSPICUOUSLY BLACK AND WHITE 
Red-headed Woodpecker 
( Melanerpes erythrocephalus) Woodpecker family 
Called also: TRI-COLOR ; RED-HEAD 
Length — 8.50 to 9.75 inches. An inch or less smaller than the 
robin. 
Male and Female — Head, neck, and throat crimson; breast and 
underneath white; back black and white; wings and tail 
blue black, with broad white band on wings conspicuous in 
flight. 
Range— United States, east of Rocky Mountains and north to 
Manitoba. 
Migrations — Abundant but irregular migrant. Most commonly 
seen in Autumn, and rarely resident. 
In thinly populated sections, where there are few guns 
about, this is still one of the commonest as it is perhaps the most 
conspicuous member of the woodpecker family, but its striking 
glossy black-and-white body and its still more striking crimson 
head, flattened out against the side of a tree like a target, where 
it is feeding, have made it all too tempting a mark for the rifles 
of the sportsmen and the sling-shots of small boys. As if suffi- 
cient attention were not attracted to it by its plumage, it must 
needs keep up a noisy, guttural rattle, her-r-ruck, ker-r-ruck, 
very like a tree-toad’s call, and flit about among the trees with 
the restlessness of a fly-catcher. Yet, in spite of these invita- 
tions for a shot to the passing gunner, it still multiplies in dis- 
tricts where nuts abound, being “more common than the robin ” 
about Washington, says John Burroughs. 
All the familiar woodpeckers have two characteristics most 
prominently exemplified in this red-headed member of their 
tribe. The hairy, the downy, the crested, the red-bellied, the 
sapsucker, and the flicker have each a red mark somewhere about 
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