HABITS
This is the subspecies that was formerly known as Baird’s woodpecker, Dryobates scalaris bairdi, which was then understood to be the resident bird of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. But when Dr. H. C. Oberholser (1911b) revised the scalaris group, the name bairdi was restricted to the bird of central Mexico, and the Texas bird was described, as a new subspecies, under the above name. It was characterized as follows:
Resembling Dryobates scalaris cactophilus, but male smaller; upper parts lighter, the white bars wider, the black bars narrower, and with more white on pileum; and sides of breast less often streaked (mostly spotted). * * *
This new subspecies differs from Dryobates scalaris bairdi, from Hidalgo, much as does Dryobates scalaris cactophilus, except that it is smaller, and still more extensively white on all the upper parts.
This race reaches its extreme development in Texas; and specimens from central Tamaulipas and central Nuevo Leon are not so light above, showing a tendency toward Dryobates scalaris bairdi. They are also somewhat more smoky below. There is, however, no difference in size between examples from Texas and Tamaulipas.
The range of the Texas woodpecker extends northward into southeastern Colorado and southward into southern Tamaulipas. George Finlay Simmons (1925) says that in Texas it is “rather general in distribution and in choice of habitat; somewhat open post oak woods and oak upland gravel terraces; mesquite forests; hackberry shade trees in town; mesquite association pasturelands; open woods not far from water; marginal timber along streams. In the hills, cottonwoods and oaks along stream bottoms; wooded slopes of gorges. In winter, leafless city shade hackberry trees.”
The Texas woodpecker is widely distributed and fairly common all over Texas, except in the extreme eastern and extreme western portions; it is a well known and familiar bird, just as our eastern downy woodpecker is in the East; it is locally known as the “Texan sapsucker” or “ladder-backed woodpecker.” Most of its habits are similar to those of the cactus woodpecker, but it seems to enjoy a somewhat more diversified habitat and is more inclined to forage and nest in larger trees; it is not so strictly confined to the deserts and their environs.
Nesting.—Mr. Simmons (1925) says that the nest is located from “4 to 25, average 12, feet from ground, in rotten stubs or dead and partly decayed branches of oak, mesquite, hackberry, and willow trees, usually alongside lake, river, creek, or ravine; when suitable trees are not to be found, nests in cedar fence posts or telegraph poles along roadsides; when in mesquite tree on mesquite-covered prairie, entrance of cavity on under side of low, drooping limb. * * * Entrance diameter 1.50. Depth of cavity 7 to 8, rarely 10.”
Eggs.—The Texas woodpecker lays 2 to 6 eggs, Usually 4 or 5, rarely as many as 7. These are indistinguishable from the eggs of the cactus woodpecker. The measurements of 51 eggs average 20.50 by 15.83 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 22.86 by 15.75, 20.32 by 17.02, 17.27 by 15.49, and 19.05 by 14.73 millimeters.
Food.—Mr. Simmons (1925) says that it “searches high up on the knotty trunks of oak trees in open groves for larvae and eggs of injurious wood-boring insects, for the adults of similar as well as other insects, and for weevils and ants.”