We noticed a red-headed woodpecker take something, apparently a bunch of moss, from a crotch of a maple and carry it to a fence post of an adjacent field. After worrying some time in trying to swallow something rather too large for his gullet, he finally succeeded, after an effort, and then worked some little time, evidently trying to secrete the remainder. Both of us had our field glasses and were watching the bird’s actions closely. After some little time he flew back to the tree he had started from, while we proceeded to the fence post to investigate, and, much to our disgust and surprise, we found the freshly killed and partly eaten body of a young bird, almost denuded of feathers, securely tucked away behind the loose bark of the post. His victim was too much mutilated to identify positively, but looked like a half-grown bluebird, whose head had been crushed in, the brain abstracted, and the entire rump and entrails torn out; the only parts left intact were the breast, upper part of the back, and the lower portion of the head. The missing parts had evidently just been eaten by the rascal while clinging to the top of the post, and the remnant was then hidden for future use.
Howard Jones (1883), of Circleville, Ohio, reports the following incident:
Under the eaves of a large barn near Mt. Sterling, O., a colony of Cliff Swallows have built for some years. Last year they were nearly exterminated by several woodpeckers. The redheads would alight at the doors of the mud huts and extract the eggs from the nests with their bills. In some nests the necks or entrance-ways were so long that the woodpeckers could not reach the eggs by this means, but not willing to be cheated of such choice food they would climb around to the side, and with a few well directed blows of their bills make openings large enough to enable them to procure the eggs. Of the dozens of nests built not a single brood was reared in any. One woodpecker bolder than the rest began eating hen’s eggs wherever they could be found.
Mr. DuBois says in his notes: “A redhead, seeing a young lark sparrow flutter in the grass, attacked it and might have killed it, had I not intervened. He had struck the young bird at one of his lores and had brought blood. I have also seen this woodpecker attack a young bluebird, on the ground, just after it had left the nest.”
But not all red-headed woodpeckers are cannibals or murderers; perhaps many individuals never indulge in such practices; and all of them have some harmless and useful feeding habits. Their insect-eating habits are impressive. They are very fond of grasshoppers and destroy them in large numbers. H. B. Bailey (1878) quotes the following from a letter from G. S. Agersborg, of Vermillion, S. Dak.:
Last spring in opening a good many birds of this species with the object of ascertaining their principal food, I found in their stomachs nothing but young grasshoppers. One of them, which had its headquarters near my house, was observed making frequent visits to an old oak post, and on examining it I found a large crack where the Woodpecker had inserted about one hundred grasshoppers of all sizes (for future use, as later observations proved), which were put in without killing them, but they were so firmly wedged in the crack that they in vain tried to get free. I told this to a couple of farmers, and found that they had also seen the same thing, and showed me the posts which were used for the same purpose. Later in the season the Woodpecker, whose station was near my house, commenced to use his stores, and today (February 10) there are only a few shrivelled-up grasshoppers left.
Milton P. Skinner (1928), referring to the feeding habits of this woodpecker in North Carolina, writes:
Flying insects are an important source of food supply all through the winter, but with the increase of the number of insects in March this activity greatly increases. The observation post for fly-catching is usually the one in which the nest hole is situated. But I noted at least one bird that used four tall trees in succession for this purpose. On February 1, 1927, a red-headed woodpecker was seen clinging to the side of a telephone pole. Twice it left the pole, flew out twenty feet, caught an insect each time, and returned to the pole to eat it. Two weeks later another bird was seen to make six trips similarly out and back during six minutes, sometimes going more than a hundred feet from its perch. As the bird went direct to the insect, caught it and returned immediately to its perch, it seemed likely that the insect was seen each time before the bird started, indicating wonderful eyesight. While not engaged in thus hawking, this bird hunted the limbs for prey. Ten days later I found this bird watching for insects and making ten fly-catching sallies in minute and a half. Its flights were from ten to one hundred and fifty feet in length, and all the insects were from forty to sixty feet above the ground. One of the redheads seen fly-catching in December, returned to its dead stub where it drilled for grubs and borers in the usual woodpecker fashion, except that its strokes were heavy and deliberate. On another occasion, I saw one of these birds fly down into the road to catch and eat an earthworm.
E. D. Nauman (1930), in Iowa, watched a red-headed woodpecker feeding a young bird in the top of a tall tree. “The adult bird was at work, darting off every few moments into the air in pursuit of insects and returning after each flight to the young bird on the tree with its prey. I watched and timed it carefully for an hour. It made from five to seven trips per minute, always at an elevation of 50 to 100 feet, and caught at each trip from one to three or more insects. * * *
“A computation based upon careful observation showed that a single individual Redhead had destroyed over 600 insects in one hour. When I left, the bird was still at work, and I am, of course, unable to state how long it had been at work at this place before I came there.”