Food.—Grinnell and Storer (1924) say:
The Modoc Woodpecker forages on both evergreen and deciduous trees, favoring the latter, perhaps, during the winter months. In summer it is usually rather quiet, particularly so as compared with the noisy California Woodpecker. It gains much of its food in the outer portions of the bark, where a few strokes of moderate intensity enable it to secure any insect or grub living near the surface of the tree.
At the margin of the forest above Coulterville, May 31, 1915, a Modoc Woodpecker was seen foraging in a yellow pine. The tree in question had recently been killed by the boring beetles which were common in the western forests that year. The woodpecker was going over the tree in systematic manner, working out and in along one branch, then ascending the trunk to the next branch where it would repeat the performance. The bird was flaking off the outer layers of the bark without much evident expenditure of effort, for little noise of tapping was heard; it was feeding presumably on the boring beetles or their larvae.
Bendire (1895) writes: “It is one of our most active Woodpeckers, always busy searching for food, which consists principally of injurious larvæ and eggs of insects, varied occasionally with a diet of small berries and seeds, and in winter sometimes of piñon nuts, pine seeds, and acorns. At this season I have often seen this species around slaughter houses, picking up stray bits of meat or fat, and have also seen it pecking at haunches of venison hung up in the open air.”
Behavior.—Mr. Skinner says, in his notes, that “the Modoc hairy seems very unsociable. One that was feeding on a cottonwood chased a visiting red-breasted sapsucker away from that tree to another, and then from tree to tree. But, when a California woodpecker came to its tree, the Modoc hairy promptly flew away.”
Voice.—Major Bendire (1895) says that this woodpecker “is very noisy, especially in the early spring. It likewise is a great drummer, and utters a variety of notes, some of which sound like ‘kick-kick, whitoo, whitoo, whit-whit, wi-wi-wi-wi,’ and a hoarse guttural one, somewhat like ‘kheak-kheak’ or ‘khack-khack’.”
DRYOBATES VILLOSUS SCRIPPSAE Huey
LOWER CALIFORNIA HAIRY WOODPECKER
HABITS
Laurence M. Huey (1927) who described and named this woodpecker, characterized it as “similar to Dryobates villosus hyloscopus Cabanis and Heine, but decidedly smaller. In fully adult birds, the dusky white of the breast extends farther down on the breast than does that on examples from the northern mountains.” He gives, as its range, “the pine clad slopes of the Sierra Juarez and Sierra San Pedro Martir, Lower California, Mexico. * * * The range of this southern race does not extend north of the International Boundary, as specimens examined from the mountains of San Diego County, California, are in no way inclined toward the race D. v. scrippsae, but are counterparts of typical D. v. hyloscopus from the northern localities. In fact, the only variation that could point toward a ‘blending’ is found in the Sierra Juarez birds, but their average falls so near that of the birds from the Sierra San Pedro Martir that the name proposed herewith should apply.”