WOODPECKERS: LEWIS WOODPECKER 
393 
and convenient pines, this second acorn-eater may be found in large 
flocks. In August Dr. J. C. Merrill has found migrating flocks of one or 
two hundred searching in the fields and along the roadsides for grass¬ 
hoppers, “at a little distance easily mistaken for blackbirds” (1888, p. 
256). And in winter when on the Wheeler Survey, on the way between 
Fort Tularosa and Fort Craig, Mr. Henshaw found “a very large colony 
of them in a snug, sheltered valley, where they had congregated from 
the neighboring mountains. . . . Extensive oak groves were inter¬ 
spersed here and there with a tall pine “which bore over its body the 
marks of the persistent attacks of the Woodpeckers, who had, perhaps, 
resorted hither, season after season, for a long term of years. Within a 
comparatively small area, there must have been at least a hundred of 
these birds gathered together, and all combined to make a very happy, 
noisy family party. Food appeared to be abundant, and obtainable with 
very little labor, so that there remained plenty of time for play, and they 
made as joyous a company as one need care to see. They kept up a 
continual chattering as they chased each other about, which was always 
good-natured in its tone” (1875, pp. 397-398). 
Just how much storing of acorns is done by the Lewis Woodpeckers 
in migrating is one of the interesting questions to be studied. Near 
Largo Canyon, October 5, 1906, we saw four o£ the birds flying back and 
forth from some acorn-laden oaks to a large pine, and once got near 
enough to see one of them come with an acorn in its bill and try to wedge 
it into a hole in the tree. There were only a few acorns in holes in the 
bark, however, as far up as we could see. As an acorn-eating Mearns 
Woodpecker was in an adjoining pine, he might have been responsible for 
some of the filled holes. In California John M. Welch wrote of large 
migrating flocks of Lewis Woodpeckers seen among the oaks, and said, 
“I would like to know why these birds store up so much food and then 
leave it for other birds to eat, for certain it is that they arc not here to 
eat it themselves.” lie speaks of the presence of the California acorn- 
eater, however, in the same oaks, and says,“the little Californian Wood¬ 
pecker resents the intrusion and may often be seen sprinting after its big 
cousin, with malice in every movement” (1899, p. 29). So perhaps in 
this case, also, the hoarding was largely done by the resident wood¬ 
pecker rather than the migrating one. 
There is an instance of the storing of shelled acorns quoted by Mr. 
Brewster in which a Lewis Woodpecker in Colorado was seen storing 
acorns in November, not in the manner of the Mearns Woodpecker, an 
unshelled acorn to a hole, but five or six acorns wedged into one half¬ 
finger hole or a much larger number in a nest-like hole (1898, p. 188). An 
interesting description of this method of storing is given by Mr. Michael 
who watched one in the Yosemite, discovered when “making trips back 
and forth between a Kellogg oak and his home tree, a cottonwood. He 
