[58] Colaptes cafer collaris.
Fig. 22.—Red-headed woodpecker. Length, about 9½ inches.
The red-headed woodpecker[59] ([fig. 22]), is well known east of the Rocky Mountains, but is rather rare in New England. Unlike some of the other species, it prefers fence posts and telegraph poles to trees as a foraging ground. Its food therefore naturally differs from that of the preceding species, and consists largely of adult beetles and wasps which it frequently captures on the wing after the fashion of flycatchers. Grasshoppers also form an important part of the food. Among the beetles are a number of predacious ground species and some tiger beetles, which are useful insects. The red-head has been accused of robbing nests of other birds, and of pecking out the brains of young birds and poultry; but as the stomachs showed little evidence to substantiate this charge, the habit probably is exceptional.
[59] Melanerpes erythrocephalus.
The vegetable food of woodpeckers is varied, but consists largely of small fruits and berries. The downy and hairy woodpeckers eat such fruits as dogwood and Virginia creeper and seeds of poison ivy, sumac, and a few other shrubs. The flicker also eats a great many small fruits and the seeds of a considerable number of shrubs and weeds. None of the three species is much given to eating cultivated fruits or crops. The red-head has been accused of eating the larger kinds of fruit, as apples, and also of taking considerable corn. Stomach examinations show that to some extent these charges are substantiated, but that the habit is not prevalent enough to cause much damage. The bird is fond of mast, especially beechnuts, and when these nuts are plentiful it remains north all winter.
Woodpeckers apparently are the only agents which can successfully cope with certain insect enemies of the forest, and, to some extent, with those of fruit trees also. For this reason, if for no other, they should be protected in every possible way.