Redhead Woodpecker

The REDHEADED WOODPECKER is one of the first birds I learned to identify and, odd as it may seem, it is not the easy task it would be under normal conditions. I was about ten years old when I saw a bird with a carmine head, white below, and with black wings, sweeping out from a treetop, catching insects on the wing, returning from each foray to the same perch. A Flycatcher of course but an exhaustive study of Wilson's and Nuttall's Ornithologies (the only two bird books I possessed at the time), revealed no red-headed flycatcher. The next sight of the bird, this time on a tree trunk, cleared the puzzling situation.

In the long interval I have watched and admired the easy assurance, playfulness, and d'Artagnan air of this rollicking blade, wearing so jauntily the colors of his country. He, like many others of our bright-colored birds, has had to struggle against not only natural forces of destruction but the more deadly one of the slow-dying unjust prejudices clustered around the banner of "SHOOT HIM DOWN."

Next time the opportunity offers, listen to one of the Redhead's family conferences, when the brown youngsters are old enough to participate. The arguments, loud calls, uncensored remarks, and unwoodpecker-like notes would shame a Democratic convention. The hearer might even imagine Dawes was addressing the Senate! Watch a pair harry a red squirrel who perhaps had broken into their cache of beechnuts. The opening attack is delivered in apparent anger but as the melée progresses, gradually changes into its real character of pure teasing. The birds generally come out top-dog, driving the would-be thief into hiding and altho my sympathies usually are with the under canine, in this case the flaunting flag of victory waved about the miscreant wins my unqualified approval. I have seen a pair isolate one of the rufous-coated imps on top of a fence-post and bedevil him so persistently that he fairly frothed at the mouth, thereby releasing some of the beechnuts stowed in his pouch. These, one of the aggressors carried off and hid, the other meanwhile continuing the attack until the freebooter gave up the rest of the loot.

Most of the genus possess a limited vocabulary but the Redhead voices an astounding array of chirps, cheeps, and rough notes including a wickup-wickup-wickup-wickup, shorter but resembling the Flicker's rolling call. Like his relative, the Anteating Woodpecker of the West, who digs holes in an old stump and fills them with acorns, sometimes traveling miles to obtain the oak-seed — the Redhead stuffs surplus food away in crannies. He lacks the instinct to chisel holes for these stores, always stowing them in some natural cavity, but the tendency toward forehandedness is there. I have frequently found large black beetles with all legs carefully removed, under crannies of bark; probably secreted at a time when the guardian angel of coleoptera may have been wandering off in the woods elsewhere, watching the nymphs and fauns at play. The utter indifference of the stronger form of life toward the suffering and torture of the weaker is not conducive to a belief that the Monitor of all cares very much whether or not they suffer.

Partiality for dust baths has fatal consequence. Hundreds are killed every year by automobiles, especially in the middle western states.