Identifier: birdloreas12nati (find matches)
Title: Bird-lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals
Subjects: Birds -- Periodicals Birds -- Conservation Periodicals
Publisher: New York, National Association of Audubon Societies
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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udge the Feeding Woodpeckers their acorns and beechnuts. While the leaves are Habits ^ 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 Californiacousins, the Redheads store up food for winter use. All sorts of odd nooks andcrannies serve the Redheads for storehouses—knot-holes, pockets under patchesof raised bark, cracks between shingles and in fences, and even railroad ties.Sometimes, instead of nuts, grasshoppers and other eatables are put away instorage. The wise birds at times make real caches, concealing their stores byhammering dow-n pieces of wood or bark over them. Beechnuts are such a large part of the fall and winter food of the Redheads (86)
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RED-HEADED WOODPECKEROrder—Pici Family—Picidje (renus—Melanekpes Species—Erythrocei-ii a lus The Red-headed Woodpecker 87 in SDine localities thai, like the )z;tay squirrels, the birds are common in ^oodbeechnut winters and absent in others. Cold and snow do not trouble them, ifthey have plenty to cat, for, as Major Bendire says, many of them winter alongour northern border, in certain years, when they can find, an abundant supply offood. In fact, in the (Greater part of the eastern states the Redhead is a ratherregular resident, but in the western part of its range it appears to migratepretty regularly, so that it is rare to see one north of latitude 40°, in winter.The western boundary of the Redheads range is the Rocky Mountains, buteast of the mountains it breeds from Manitoba and northern New York southto the Gulf of Mexico; though it is a rare bird in eastern New England. In sections where this erratic Woodpecker migrates, it leavesMigration its nesting-grounds early in

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