402 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
Jemez Mountains at the same altitude August 25, 1908 (Bailey), which probably 
is about as low as it breeds in New Mexico, being therefore confined to the middle 
and higher altitudes; how high up in the mountains it remains through the winter 
has not yet been determined, but it is apparently non-migratory, except for a slight 
vertical migration in the higher mountains.— W. W. Cooke. 
Nest. —In holes in trees. Eggs: 3 to 6, white. 
Food. —In 382 stomachs of the various forms of hairy woodpeckers examined, 
77.67 per cent of the contents was animal matter and 22.33 vegetable. The vege¬ 
table matter contained seeds, miscellaneous substances, and less than a fourth, 
fruit, mostly wild berries. Over 31 per cent of the animal matter was larvae of the 
destructive woodboring beetles, of which one stomach contained 100. Ants 
amounted to 17 per cent and caterpillars about 10 per cent, many of them wood¬ 
boring species. “It is a bird from which the orchardist and forester have nothing 
to fear and much to gain” (Beal). 
General Habits. —Except when feeding noisy young in a tree trunk 
or going about with a vociferous family, the Rocky Mountain Hairy 
Woodpecker with its white stripe down its black back, plastered on the 
side of a tree, may easily be overlooked in the coniferous forest where it 
makes its home; and where, silent and solitary, it unobtrusively goes 
about its business, ridding the trees of their hidden enemies. Equipped 
with its strong climbers it scales the trunks with perfect ease, going up 
with short hops and between jumps propping itself up—especially when 
stretching back for a sledge-hammer blow—by means of the stiff 
feathers of its tail. The feathers, by molting time, show the result of this 
hard usage. In one specimen taken September 27, at Lake Burford, not 
only were the tail feathers greatly abraded, but the shaft of one was split. 
In the date and method of molting decided irregularity was shown 
in six specimens secured. In two, the wing quills had been molted before 
the tail, while in four others the process was apparently going on simul¬ 
taneously. In one bird the round white spots on the old secondaries had, 
as is frequently seen, given way before the black part of the feather, 
looking as if cut out with a punch. One of the birds collected on August 
25 was mainly in fresh fall plumage, but one taken September 28 was 
mainly in pinfeathers. 
Nesting time comes late in the high mountains. In the Sangre de 
Cristos at an altitude of 11,000 feet, on June 21, 1920, Mr. Jensen found 
a nest with noisy young thirty feet up in a large quaking aspen, which 
stood on the edge of an avalanche slide. The following year, on May 22, 
he made his way through four feet of snow to the same tree and this time 
found a nest with fresh eggs. 
A family of young, which were going about by themselves on August 
16, at 11,600 feet at the foot of Pecos Baldy, picking on the dead trees 
and drumming precociously, came around camp and drove off a family 
of Three-toed Woodpeckers, which more rightfully belonged at that high 
