Eggs.—Bendire (1895) says:
From five to nine eggs are laid to a set; those of six or seven are the most common, but sets of eight are not very rare; I have found several of that number, and a single set of nine.
The eggs of Lewis’s woodpecker vary greatly in shape and also in size. They are mostly ovate or short ovate in shape, but an occasional set is decidedly rounded ovate, while others are elliptical ovate; the shell is close grained and, in most cases, dull, opaque white, without any gloss whatever. Some sets, however, are moderately glossy, but scarcely as much so as the better-known eggs of the red-headed woodpecker, and none are as lustrous as the eggs of the flicker.
The measurements of 58 eggs average 26.22 by 19.99 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 30.48 by 21.34, 26.67 by 24.38, and 23.37 by 17.27 millimeters.
Young.—Major Bendire (1895) says of the young:
Both sexes assist in incubation, and this lasts about two weeks. The young leave the nest about three weeks after they are hatched, and are readily tamed. I kept a couple for several days, but they had such enormous appetites that I was glad to give them their liberty, as they kept me busy providing suitable food. They were especially fond of grasshoppers, but also ate raw meat, and climbed everywhere over the rough walls of my house. A considerable share of the food of these birds is picked up off the ground, and they appear to be much more at home there than woodpeckers generally are. The young are fed on insects, and I believe also on berries; I have seen one of these birds alight in a wild strawberry patch, pick up something, evidently a strawberry, fly to a tree close by in which the nest was situated, and give it to one of the young which was clinging to the side of the tree close to the nesting site.
Plumages.—The young Lewis’s woodpecker is hatched naked and blind, but the juvenal plumage is acquired before the young bird leaves the nest. In fresh juvenal plumage the red “face” of the adult is replaced by black or dusky, though a young bird taken on July 22 shows some red mixed with the black in this area; the bill is small and weak; the crown and occiput are dull brownish black, without any greenish luster; the silvery-gray nuchal collar of the adult is wholly lacking; the under parts are mostly dull pale gray or dull grayish white, more or less suffused on the central breast and abdomen with dull red or orange-red; the whole plumage is softer and more blended in texture. Dr. J. A. Allen (Scott, 1886) says of some young birds that he examined: “The back and upper surface of the wings are bronzy green nearly as in the adult, with, however, in addition, broad bars of steel-blue on the scapulars and quills. These bars are especially prominent on the secondaries and inner vanes of the primaries, and are seen also in some specimens on the rectrices. The steel-blue edging the outer vanes of the quill feathers in the adult is absent; and the inner secondaries and longest primaries are tipped more or less prominently with white.”
This juvenal plumage is worn through the summer and into September, when the molt into the first winter plumage begins with a sprinkling of the silvery, bristly feathers appearing on the breast and in the collar, with the increase of red in the “face,” and with metallic-green feathers showing on the head. This molt is apparently prolonged and is not finished until early in winter, when young birds and adults are practically alike. Adults have a complete annual molt late in summer and fall; I have observed it as late as October 12.
Food.—Referring to the food of Lewis’s woodpecker, Major Bendire (1895) writes:
In summer its food consists mainly of insects of different kinds, such as grasshoppers, large black crickets, ants, beetles, flies, larvæ of different kinds, as well as of berries, like wild strawberries and raspberries, service berries and salmon berries, acorns, pine seeds, and juniper berries, while in cultivated districts cherries and other small fruits enter into its daily bill of fare. Here, when common, it may occasionally do some little damage in the orchards, but this is fully compensated by the noxious insects it destroys at the same time. In localities where grasshoppers are abundant they live on these pests almost exclusively while they last. Mr. Shelly W. Denton tells me he noticed this Woodpecker gathering numbers of May flies (Ephemera) and sticking them in crevices of pines, generally in trees in which it nested, evidently putting them away for future use, as they lasted but a few days. It is an expert flycatcher, and has an extremely keen vision, sallying forth frequently after some small insect when this is perhaps fully 100 feet from its perch.