On August 29, the writer, accompanied by Mr. Richardson, made a trip to Lake of the Woods, Klamath County. Just south of Ashland a few scattered individuals were seen. As the Cascade summit was approached many were seen in the open fields and meadows. In the flats near the lake, and in the open meadows near Rainbow Creek, numbers were found feeding on the mountain huckleberries. Returning to Ashland on September 1, huge flocks of these birds could be seen moving steadily toward the lower Valley. * * *
On September 7, also, the growers in the vicinity of Medford reported the arrival of the first birds there. Flocks were present until September 19, when almost every bird in the area disappeared. A few scattering individuals were left in various foothill areas, but these left during November. The areas in which they wintered so abundantly during the 1924-5 season were totally deserted during the 1925-6 season, and not until spring did they return to this area.
Herbert Brown (1902) states that Lewis’s woodpeckers appeared in large numbers, during the fall of 1884, in the Santa Cruz Valley, Ariz., the first he had seen there for 20 years. He saw the first one on September 28 and ten on the 30th. They were very abundant at times during October but disappeared at intervals. They were last seen on November 16.
Winter.—W. E. D. Scott (1886) says of its winter habits in Arizona:
About my house it generally appeared about the 20th of September, and some years was very abundant. It stays as late as April 20, and then is not seen again till fall, though I have seen the species in the pine region above me late in the spring. In 1884, there was an unprecedented abundance of the species throughout the entire region under consideration. They came in countless numbers about the ranches, both on the San Pedro and near Tucson. Arriving early in September, they did great injury to the fruit crops raised in these regions, and I heard much complaint of them. In the oak woods they were equally abundant, living almost altogether on acorns, but spending much of the warmer portion of the day catching insects on the wing, very much as any of the larger flycatchers do, only that on leaving the perch of observation or rest, the flight is much more prolonged than in the flycatchers that I have seen.
Lewis’s woodpeckers sometimes remain in winter, in small numbers, as far north as the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. According to Suckley and Cooper (1860), they are “constant winter residents” near Fort Dalles on the Columbia River. Of their winter habits, Suckley writes:
They seem in winter to be semi-gregarious, flying singly, yet still keeping more or less in each other’s company. Their flight at this season is high and very erratic, resembling much, in its characteristic peculiarities, that of the swallow On warm days they keep up a lively chattering noise, unlike, in character, that of any other woodpecker that I have heard. During the cold season they are so shy that it is difficult to shoot them, as at the least alarm they betake themselves to the tops of the highest trees in the vicinity. They at that season subsist principally upon the larvae of insects, found in the cracks and fissures of the “red pine” of the country. I dissected a specimen killed at Fort Dalles, January 9, 1855, finding the coats of the stomach (gizzard) very thick and muscular, its cavity filled with the white larvae of insects, together with fine gravel.
DISTRIBUTION
Range.—Western United States, southwestern Canada, and northwestern Mexico; migratory in the northern areas.
Breeding range.—Lewis’s woodpecker breeds north to southern British Columbia (Courtenay, Okanagan Landing, and Arrow Lake); Montana (Fortine, Flathead Lake, and Great Falls); and southwestern South Dakota (Elk Mountains). East to southwestern South Dakota (Elk Mountains); southeastern Wyoming (Laramie Hills and Laramie); eastern Colorado (Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, Boone, and Rouse Junction); and New Mexico (Bojuaque and Sacramento Mountain). South to southern New Mexico (Sacramento Mountain); Arizona (San Francisco Mountain and Fort Whipple); and southern California (Paso Robles). West through the coast ranges of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia (Victoria, Comox, and Courtenay).