Feeding
Habits.
It would be a stingy man, indeed, who would begrudge the Woodpeckers their acorns and beechnuts. While the leaves are still green on the trees, the Redheads discover the beechnuts and go to work. "It is a truly beautiful sight," Dr. Merriam says, "to watch these magnificent birds creeping about after the manner of Warblers, among the small branches and twigs, which bend low with their weight, while picking and husking the tender nuts."
The nuts are not always eaten on the spot, for, like their famous California cousins, the Redheads store up food for winter use. All sorts of odd nooks and crannies serve the Redheads for storehouses—knot-holes, pockets under patches of raised bark, cracks between shingles and fences, and even railroad ties. Sometimes, instead of nuts, grasshoppers and other eatables are put away in storage. The wise birds at times make real caches, concealing their stores by hammering down pieces of wood or bark over them.
Beechnuts are such a large part of the fall and winter food of the Redheads in some localities, that, like the gray squirrels, the birds are common in good beechnut winters and absent in others. Cold and snow do not trouble them, if they have plenty to eat, for, as Major Bendire says, many of them "winter along our northern border, in certain years, when they can find an abundant supply of food." In fact, in the greater part of the eastern states the Redhead is "a rather regular resident," but in the western part of its range "It appears to migrate pretty regularly," so that it is rare to see one "North of latitude 40°, in winter." The western boundary of the Redhead's range is the Rocky Mountains, but east of the mountains it breeds from Manitoba and northern New York south to the Gulf of Mexico; though it is a rare bird in eastern New England.
Migration.
In sections where this erratic Woodpecker migrates, it leaves its nesting-grounds early in October, and returns the latter part of April or the beginning of May. Before too much taken up with the serious business of life, the Redhead goes gaily about, as Major Bendire says, "frolicking and playing hide-and-seek with its mate, and when not so engaged, amusing itself by drumming on some resonant dead limb, or on the roof and sides of houses, barns, etc." For though, like other drummers, the Woodpeckers are not found in the front ranks of the orchestra, they beat a royal tattoo that may well express many fine feelings.
When the musical spring holiday is over and the birds have chosen a tree for the nest, they hew out a pocket in a trunk or branch, anywhere from eight to eighty feet from the ground. When the young hatch, there comes a happy day for the looker-on who, by kind intent and unobtrusive way, has earned the right to watch the lovely birds flying back and forth, caring for their brood.
Nest.
And then, at last, come the days when the gray-headed youngsters, from hanging out of the window, boldly open their wings and launch into the air. Anxious times these are for old birds,—times when the watcher's admiration may be roused by heroic deeds of parental love; for many a parent bird fairly flaunts in the face of the enemy, as if trying to say, "Kill me; spare my young!"
One family of Redheads once gave me a delightful three weeks. When the old birds were first discovered, one was on a stub in a meadow. When joined by its mate, as the farmer was coming with oxen and hayrack to take up the rows of haycocks that led down the field, the pair flew slowly ahead along a line of locusts, pecking quietly at the bark of each tree before flying on. At the foot of the meadow they flew over to a small grove in the adjoining pasture.