This behavior is no doubt due to the fact that the family remains together until early in winter, although family groups are probably joined by other individuals until the number above referred to is attained. Numerous observers speak of the frequent association of the red-cockaded woodpecker with other birds. This to the mind of the writer, however, is purely accidental and is due to the fact that there are certain species of birds that inhabit the open pineries and have common feeding ground and habitat. It is true that one often sees bluebirds, tufted titmice, white-breasted and brown-headed nuthatches, and red-cockaded woodpeckers in the same woodland and that when sitting quietly and concealed all the species mentioned pass in review before the observer, but probably it is not a true gregariousness that embraces all these various species; rather the restlessness that so frequently seems to possess the avian population of a given tract of woods communicates itself from one to the other and the entire avifauna of a limited patch of woodland begins to move in a certain direction perhaps because of some alarm which has been communicated from one member of the group to the others.
These woodpeckers are exceedingly active, galloping from one tree to another and rapidly ascending it in quest of food or apparently often merely to secure a better observation point somewhere near the top of the tree. Their usual custom is to ascend the tree in spirals, although they have frequently been observed to continue a straight course up the trunk particularly when feeding. The bird may be described as wary rather than shy and is most adept at the familiar woodpecker trick of keeping the trunk of the tree between an approaching observer and itself.
As a rule they do not feed close to the ground, nor have I ever observed one on the ground even after the burning of a woodland, at which time the flicker and the red-bellied woodpecker may both be observed on the ground searching for grubs and insects killed by the blaze. Dr. Irving Phinizy (MS.) states that he has on several occasions observed the red-cockaded woodpecker descend a tree in a series of backward hops. This the writer has never observed. Arthur H. Howell (1932) states that the ivorybill inches backward down a tree, a somewhat different procedure. Frequently also they are observed, particularly when feeding near the top of a pine and out toward the end of a limb, to descend the hanging limb nuthatch fashion. Much of their feeding is done in the highest branches of the trees, and they seem to have a predilection for remaining there, spending a considerable portion of their time in the very crown of the tree, where they are very difficult to see.
They are exceedingly quarrelsome, particularly during the breeding season, yet their quarrels do not seem to be so serious or so prolonged as those of the red-headed woodpecker; and not infrequently, after the lapse of a very little time, birds that have been scolding one another most extensively again alight on the same pine tree and go about their respective businesses in perfect amity.
C. J. Maynard (1896) states, concerning its habits, as follows:
Wilson called the Cockaded Woodpeckers, Picus querulus, and this seems, at first glance, to be a most appropriate name, for, of all the family, these are not only the most noisy, but their notes are given in a decidedly fretful tone as if the birds were constantly in an irritable state of mind. It must have been upon the impulse of the moment, however, that the Pioneer Ornithologist gave them the name of Querulus Woodpeckers, for a close study of their habits gives a very different impression of them. They are, in fact, a most jovial class of birds, being almost constantly engaged in sporting about the tops of tall pines or chasing one another from tree to tree, uttering their peevish sounding notes very frequently when in the best humor. The noise is more noticeable because they congregate in flocks, and it is quite rare to find even a pair without other companions. They are also fond of the company of other members of the family and will even associate with the Jays, Blue Birds, or Warblers. This gregarious instinct does not forsake them during the breeding season, for they build in detached communities. The nests are almost always in living pines, often thirty or forty feet from the ground; thus, as the trunks of these trees are covered with a smooth bark, it is quite difficult to climb them and, when the nests are reached it is not easy to cut the hard wood, especially as the straight trunks afford no foot-hold.
In flight, the cockaded woodpeckers resemble the downy but when they alight they strike the object upon which they wish to rest very hard. Like the preceding species, they are also exceedingly agile, moving spirally up the tall tree trunks with great celerity. Although they will occasionally alight near the ground, yet they spend the greater part of their time in the tops of the lofty pines; in fact, they pass a large portion of their lives there, for they are seldom, if ever, found elsewhere than in the piney woods and they inhabit this kind of woodland even to the extreme southern portion of the main-land of Florida.
The bird is resident throughout its normal range, although David V. Hembree, of Roswell, Ga., in the very foothills of the Appalachian Range, a lifelong student and collector of birds, writes me, “This bird does not breed in this locality. I have never seen a nest. A few are found here, nearly always males in April or May, and I have always thought them to be migrants or strays from their regular range.”
In common with the other small black and white woodpeckers, this species carries the vernacular name of sapsucker and in the main is not differentiated from the others, although one astute lumberman once said to me: “Speaking of sapsuckers, there is a piney-woods sapsucker which is different from the others, leastways he acts different.”
Voice.—The voice is variously described by different observers—“harsh and discordant,” “almost exactly resembling the calls of the Brownheaded Nuthatch,” “resembling the yank-yank of a White-breasted Nuthatch,” “they have sharp calls more like loud sparrow alarms than woodpecker notes,” “resembling the querulous cries of young birds.”