WOODPECKERS: MEARNS WOODPECKER 389 
caught in the act and properly punished. As Mr. Ligon says, the great 
number of holes, or acorn stalls, in the dead yellow pines, in the range of 
the Mearns Woodpecker, is evidence of its industry. 
A yellow pine snag, which he found at about 7,800 feet on the edge of 
a half pine-clad valley known as 0-0 Canyon, about a hundred miles 
southwest of Magdalena, was literally honey-combed with holes. As he 
describes it, “The snag was about thirty feet tall, and my estimate was 
that there was an average of a hundred holes to the square foot of surface. 
The average circumference of the stump was about three and a half feet, 
making 10,500 acorn storage holes. The holes were from half an inch to 
five eighths of an inch in diameter and about an inch deep in the bark and 
rotten outer surface of the wood. Many of the stalls contained dried 
acorns that were stored the year before, and although dry they were 
sound and good. Two large dead pines stood within twenty feet of the 
snag, and these were also thickly perforated, one half of the holes con¬ 
taining acorns. Two pairs of the birds were nesting in the nearby 
trees” (MS). 
In the San Mateo Mountains, where Mr. Ligon found the Wood¬ 
peckers very abundant, they were living in the pines intermixed with 
oaks down to about 6,000 feet. 
At the head of the Mimbres, Mr. Bailey found many of the old pine 
trees thickly perforated, some full of acorns, others empty (MS); and in 
the Chuska Mountains, Mr. Birdseye found trees the bark of which was 
riddled with holes common all through the yellow-pine parks, many of 
them with the bark stripped off by bears in attempts to get the acorns. 
There were no acorns in the Chuskas that year, although several of the 
Woodpeckers were seen (MS). In the Pecos Mountains, Mr. Henshaw 
found the birds wandering, perhaps in search of better acorn crops. 
In the Yosemite Valley, where C. W. Michael watched the California 
form of the Mearns Woodpecker for a term of years, lie found that 
during several years when there was a bountiful crop of acorns the gi eat 
granaries were utterly ignored and but desultory storing was practiced. 
. . . Then came the fall of 1923 with a complete failure of the acorn 
crop . . . and the California Woodpeckers, for lack of food, were foiced 
during the winter of 1923-1924 to leave the valley.” In the spring, the 
birds returned, and that fall, when the oaks again bore a heavy ciop, 
Mr. Michael found “at least a few individuals, taking full advantage of 
the opportunity to store.” As he concludes, “It is the barren yeais that 
teach the value of thrift. Intelligence plus experience may well have 
been the cause of the excessive storing of this year. A few of the more 
intelligent woodpeckers that were forced last winter to abandon the 
valley for lack of food are now preparing against the next lean yeai 
(1926, pp. 68-69). 
