En route, 105 dead animals representing fifteen species were counted; of these, thirty-nine were red-headed woodpeckers. The mortality in this species was higher than for any other species of vertebrate animal noted and I believe that several contributory factors are responsible for it. First, these birds have a propensity for feeding upon insects and waste grain in and along the roads; second, they delay taking wing before the approaching car, in all probability being poor judges of its speed; and third, they have a slow “get-away,” that is, they can not quickly gain sufficient speed to escape the oncoming car. However, I feel certain that a speed as high as thirty-five to forty miles an hour is necessary in order to overtake these birds.
Alexander Wilson (1832) writes:
Notwithstanding the care which this bird, in common with the rest of its genus, takes to place its young beyond the reach of enemies, within the hollows of trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose depredations neither the height of the tree nor the depth of the cavity, is the least security. This is the black snake (Coluber constrictor), who frequently glides up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, enters the woodpecker’s peaceful apartment, devours the eggs or helpless young, in spite of the cries and fluttering of the parents; and, if the place be large enough, coils himself up in the spot they occupied, where he will sometimes remain for several days.
Fall.—The fall migration is often well marked. A. H. Helme (1882), writing from Millers Place, Long Island, N. Y., where the bird occurs mainly as a migrant, says:
The first one observed this season was on the 10th of September. On the 12th I saw three, and on the 20th I saw one. Early on the morning of the 24th of September they began to pass over in large numbers, and continued to pass until about 10 o’clock, after which very few were seen, except straggling groups of three or four, and occasionally a single one was seen to pass over during the day. The flight must have consisted of several hundred, principally young birds. They came from the east and were flying west. Many of them in their flight would alight for a few minutes in the orchards and corn fields to feed on the half-ripened corn, or search among the apple trees for the larva or eggs of insects but would soon continue on their journey, and their places would be supplied by others. I noticed one or two to dart out and seize an insect in the manner of a flycatcher. The following day but two or three were seen. A few stragglers, however, were occasionally met with up to the 10th of October, and one was seen as late as the 23rd of November.
John B. Semple (1930) writes:
On September 16, 1929, a flight of red-headed woodpeckers (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) was observed passing over the marshes at the head of Sandusky Bay, Ohio. The birds were flying in little groups of two to five against a stiff southwest wind heading nearly south and at an elevation of sixty to eighty yards. Rather more than half of them were immature birds but the old and young were not segregated. I was hunting ducks at the time and counted forty-eight woodpeckers passing in a little more than two hours. They apparently came from Ontario and probably crossed Lake Erie by way of Point Pelee and Bass Island which would make the flight over water only about nine miles. It was interesting to note that each successive group of birds followed exactly the same route over the marshes although those that had gone before were well out of sight.
Winter.—The red-headed woodpecker is generally considered to be a migratory species throughout the northern portion of its breeding range, but its movements seem to depend almost entirely on the abundance or scarcity of its winter food supply, mainly acorns and beechnuts; when these nuts are available in considerable quantities, this woodpecker is to be found in reasonable numbers within its summer range in the northern States. When Dr. C. Hart Merriam (1878) referred to it as remaining occasionally in northern New York, Lewis County, in winter, some of his ornithological friends were skeptical. He says:
I therefore wrote to my friend, Mr. C. L. Bagg, asking him to send me a lot of red-headed woodpeckers as soon as possible, and in a week’s time received a box containing over twenty specimens,—all killed in Lewis County and when the snow was three feet deep! This was proof positive. Notes kept by Mr. Bagg and myself during the past six years show that they were abundant here during the winters 1871-72, 1873-74, 1875-76, and 1877-78; while they were rare or did not occur at all during the winters of 1872-73 and 1876-77. Their absence was in no way governed by the severity of the winters, but entirely dependent upon the absence of the usual supply of beechnuts. While the greater portion of nuts fall to the ground and are buried beneath the snow far beyond the reach of the woodpeckers, yet enough remain on the trees all winter to furnish abundant subsistence for those species which feed on them. * * *
During the autumn the scattered pairs for several miles around usually congregate in some suitable wood, containing a plenty of beech-trees, and here spend the long cold winter in company, chattering and chasing one another about among the trees to keep warm, and to help while away the time. “Coe’s woods,” in this immediate vicinity, has long been famous as the great winter resort for the red-headed woodpeckers of the neighborhood, and it is certainly the most suitable place for their purposes to be found for many miles around. This piece of woods, not over an eighth of a mile in extent, contains, besides hundreds of beeches (Fagus ferruginea), a large number of elms (Ulmus americana), and white ash-trees (Fraxinus americana) of great size, most of the tops of which are now dead. What more favorable location than this woods could a woodpecker desire? Here they have beechnuts in abundance and a bountiful supply of dead limbs and tree-tops far above the reach of the small charges commonly used by bird-collectors.