Identifier: birdlore121910nati (find matches)
Title: Bird lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Committee of the Audubon Societies of America National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals National Audubon Society
Subjects: Birds Birds Ornithology
Publisher: New York City : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
, who would begrudge theFeeding Woodpeckers their acorns and beechnuts. While the leaves are still green on the trees, the Redheads discover the beechnuts andgo to work. It is a truly beautiful sight, Dr. Merriam says, to watch thesemagnificent birds creeping about after the manner of Warblers, among thesmall branches and twigs, which bend low with their weight, while picking andhusking 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 down pieces of wood or bark over them. Beechnuts are such a large part of the fall and winter food of the Redheads (86)
Text Appearing After Image:
RED-HEADED WOODPECKEROrder-Pici Eamily-PiciDjs GenUS-MELANEBPE9 SpecieS-ERYTHROCEPHALUS The Red-headed Woodpecker 87 in some localities that, like the gray squirrels, the birds are common in goodbeechnut winters and absent in others. Cold and snow do not trouble them, ifthey have plenty to eat, 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 October, and retur

Note About Images