“Like the hairy woodpecker, they are persistent drummers, rattling away for minutes at a time on some dead limb, and are especially active during the mating season, in April. I have located more than one specimen by traveling in the direction of the sound when it was fully half a mile away. * * * Its flight is swift, greatly undulating, and is often protracted for considerable distances.”
Dr. Lewis says in his notes: “When one bird relieved the other in guarding the cavity, the bird taking over guard duty flew low toward the stub and swerved sharply upward, with widespread tail, to alight near the opening.”
Voice.—Dr. Lewis (MS.) records the common cry of this woodpecker as “tchuk, often shortened and sharpened to kip.” He also says: “A male mounted a stub, about 25 feet from me, and there, in plain view, scolded me vigorously with a sharp note like kuk, repeated about once a second for some minutes. Each time the note was uttered there was a flash of whitish at the bird’s eye, as though it winked with each utterance. It was also heard to utter a rattling note, apparently another kind of scolding cry.”
Francis H. Allen tells me that the “call-note resembles the cluck used in New England to start a horse; it has a ‘woodeny’ quality.” Ralph Hoffmann (1927) says that “in the breeding season the Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker makes a very loud rolling sound by drumming on dry limbs and when concerned about the nest a shrill kick-er-uck-a-kick. The ordinary call is tschick or tschuck.” A note of greeting, possibly part of a love-making performance, is thus described by Mr. Achilles (1906): “Several times when the female was getting grubs in the dead spruce near the hole, the male would fly from some distant tree and alight near her. She would see him coming and, just about as he was about to alight, would spread her wings and utter a ‘whe-e-e-e-ee.’ This call, which was its loudest at its middle point, rose and then fell to the same pitch at which it was begun.”
Rev. C. W. G. Eifrig (1906) heard a queer sound that “was as if produced by pulling out the end of a clock spring and suddenly releasing it, producing a wiry, humming sound. The author of it proved to be a male of this woodpecker. In the course of the half hour that I watched him he showed himself master of quite a repertoire of notes and would-be songs. When flying he would say: chut chut and then rattle like a Kingfisher. When hammering on a tree and preening himself, he would intersperse those actions by chuckling: duck, duck, duck.”
Field marks.—All the three-toed woodpeckers can be easily recognized by the yellow patch on the crown of the adult male and by more or less yellow in the crowns or young birds of both sexes. The crown patch of the adult male arcticus is larger and extends farther forward than that of tridactylus. But the best field mark for the Arctic three-toed woodpecker is the solid-black back, without any white markings, and in the female the solid-black crown as well; the dorsal aspect, when the bird is clinging to a tree trunk, often appears wholly black. The white stripe on the side of the head, below the eye, is much wider in arcticus than in tridactylus, and the latter has the back transversely banded with white.
Enemies.—Mr. Achilles (1906) relates the following:
In the course of the morning, two red-breasted nuthatches tormented the woodpeckers for fifteen minutes. * * * They hovered around the hole with drooping wings, holding their tails up like wrens. One of them finally ventured into the hole so far that just his tail was protruding. They would fly away when the parents approached the hole, but would return as soon as the nest was unprotected. After some time the male woodpecker went into the hole, evidently intending to peck them in case they should look into it. During the three minutes he remained in the hole, he managed to keep from looking out for one straight minute. Nevertheless, he was greatly agitated, and would look out every few seconds to see if the nuthatches were approaching,—his crown-patch showing brightly. At last the male nuthatch came to the edge of the hole, whereat the woodpecker made an unsuccessful attempt to peck his opponent, afterward flying out with a rush, and chasing the nuthatch for some distance on the wing.
Soon after that four Canada jays approached, and one of them ventured near the nest hole, but the woodpecker and a hermit thrush succeeded in driving him and his companions away, and they did not return.
Joseph Dixon (1927) tells of an attempt by a black bear to rob a nest of young Arctic three-toed woodpeckers: