The hole was in the top of a great primeval white oak, standing in the bottom of a wooded ravine and at the edge of a neglected clearing, in southern Beaver County. I had discovered it a month or six weeks before, attracted by the calls of the bird. The hole was drilled in a dead and vertically standing bough about eight inches in diameter, in the very centre of the crown of the oak, and was, I should say, about eighty feet above the ground; it was drilled in the northern side of the bough, and beneath the talus of a branch which had died and fallen away, leaving a knot-hole a few inches above. The woodpeckers’ hole was newly cut, and the bark around and beneath it had been trimmed by use or by design, so that the region about formed a tawny patch upon the grey of the bough.
S. A. Grimes (1932) mentions four cases that have come under his observation, in which red-bellied woodpeckers have occupied old nests of red-cockaded woodpeckers in Florida. F. M. Phelps (1914) mentions another similar case.
Eggs.—The red-bellied woodpecker lays three to eight eggs, usually four or five. It is a persistent layer; if the first set is taken, it will lay a second set within a week or two, generally in the same nest. Mr. Stockard (1904) reports his experience with a pair that laid four sets of eggs, 19 eggs in all, and all in the same nest.
Bendire (1895) says that “the eggs are white, mostly ovate in shape; the shell is fine grained and rather dull looking, with little or no gloss, resembling in this respect the eggs of Lewis’s woodpecker more than those of the red-headed species.” I have seen eggs that are elliptical-ovate in shape, and decidedly glossy; eggs that have been incubated for some time become more glossy than when first laid. The measurements of 50 eggs average 25.06 by 18.78 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 27.00 by 19.79, 25.15 by 23.62, 23.00 by 18.70, and 23.11 by 16.76 millimeters.
Young.—The period of incubation is said to be about 14 days. Both sexes assist in this and in the feeding and care of the young. In the more northern portions of its range, probably only one brood is reared in a season, but in the South this woodpecker is said to raise two and sometimes three broods.
Plumages.—Like other woodpeckers, the young are hatched naked and blind, but the juvenal plumage is acquired before the young leave the nest. In this the young male closely resembles the adult female, but the colors are duller, the barring is less distinct, and the white bars are suffused with brownish white; there are indistinct dusky shaft streaks on the chest and little or no red on the abdomen, which, if present, is more orange or yellowish; there is no clear red on the head, but the gray crown is sometimes suffused centrally with dark red mixed with the gray; the hind neck is often suffused with pinkish or yellowish. The juvenal female is similar to the young male, but the top of the head is darker gray, or dusky, and there is less reddish or yellowish suffusion anywhere. The juvenal plumage is apparently worn through the first fall; I have seen it as late as December 20, but Forbush (1927) says that it is shed between August and October. In the first winter plumage, there is an advance toward maturity, young males acquiring more red on the crown and occiput, and young females on the latter. There is probably a more or less continuous molt during winter, or a partial prenuptial molt in early spring, by which young birds become practically indistinguishable from adults. Adults have a complete postnuptial molt late in summer and early in fall.
Food.—Bendire (1895) says:
Its food consists of about equal proportions of animal and vegetable matter, and it feeds considerably on the ground. Insects, like beetles, ants, grasshoppers, different species of flies, and larvae are eaten by them, as well as acorns, beechnuts, pine seeds, juniper berries, wild grapes, blackberries, strawberries, pokeberries, palmetto and sour-gum berries, cherries, and apples. In the South it has acquired a liking for the sweet juice of oranges and feeds to some extent on them; but as it always returns to the same one, until this ceases to yield any more juice, the damage done in this is slight. It has also been observed drinking the sweet sap from the troughs in sugar camps. The injury it commits by the little fruit it eats during the season is fully atoned for by the numerous insects and their larvae which it destroys at the same time, and I therefore consider this handsome Woodpecker fully worthy of protection.
An examination of 22 stomachs by Professor Beal (1895) showed: “Animal matter (insects) 26 percent and vegetable matter 74 percent. A small quantity of gravel was found in 7 stomachs, but was not reckoned as food. Ants were found in 14 stomachs, and amounted to 11 percent of the whole food. Adult beetles stand next in importance, aggregating 7 percent of all food, while larval beetles only reach 3 percent. Caterpillars had been taken by only 2 birds, but they had eaten so many that they amounted to 4 percent of the whole food. The remaining animal food is made up of small quantities of bugs(Hemiptera), crickets (Orthoptera), and spiders, with a few bones of a small tree frog found in 1 stomach taken in Florida.”
The red-bellied woodpecker eats some corn, which it has been seen to steal from corncribs and from bunches of corn hung up to dry. Various berries have been recorded in its food, besides those mentioned above, mulberries, elderberries, bayberries, blueberries, and the berries of the Virginia creeper, cornel, holly, dogwood, and poison ivy, also the seeds of ragweed and wild sarsaparilla, hazelnuts, and pecans. N. M. MCGuire (1932) saw one feeding at the borings of a yellow-bellied sapsucker on a sugar maple tree, driving the latter away; he “would fly at the Sapsucker, causing him to dodge around a limb in order to keep out of the way.”