THE
RED HEADED WOODPECKER
| PERHAPS no bird in
North America is more universally known than the Red
Headed Woodpecker. He is found in all parts of the United
States and is sometimes called, for short, by the
significant name of Red-Head. His tri-colored plumage,
red, white and black, glossed with steel blue, is so
striking and characteristic, and his predatory habits in
the orchards and corn-fields, and fondness for hovering
along the fences, so very notorious, that almost, every
child is acquainted with the Red Headed Woodpecker. In
the immediate neighborhood of large cities, where the old
timber is chiefly cut down, he is not so frequently
found. Wherever there is a deadening, however, you will
find him, and in the dead tops and limbs of -high trees
he makes his home. Towards the mountains, particularly in
the vicinity of creeks and rivers, these birds are
extremely numerous, especially in the latter end of
summer. It is interesting to hear them rattling on the
dead leaves of trees or see them on the roadside fences,
where they flit from stake to stake. We remember a
tremendous and quite alarming and afterwards ludicrous
rattling by one of them on some loose tin roofing on a
neighbor's house. This occurred so often that the owner,
to secure peace had the roof repaired. They love the wild cherries, the earliest and sweetest apples, for, as is said of him, 11 he is so excellent a connoisseur in fruit, that whenever an apple or pear is found broached by him, it is sure to be among the ripest and best flavored. When alarmed he seizes a capital one by striking his open bill into it, and bears it off to the woods." He eats the rich, succulent, milky young corn with voracity. He is of a gay and frolicsome disposition, and half a dozen of the fraternity are frequently seen diving and vociferating around the high dead limbs of some large trees, pursuing and playing with each other, and amusing the passerby with their gambols. |
He is a comical fellow, too, prying
around at you from the bole of a tree or from his nesting
hole therein. Though a lover of fruit, he does more good than injury. Insects are his natural food, and form at least two thirds of his subsistence. He devours the destructive insects that penetrate the bark and body of a tree to deposit their eggs and larvae. About the middle of May, he begins to construct his nest, which is formed in the body of large limbs of trees, taking in no material but smoothing it within to the proper shape and size. The female lays six eggs, of a pure white. The young appear about the first of June. About the middle of September the Red Heads begin to migrate to warmer climates, travelling at night time in an irregular way like a disbanded army and stopping for rest and food through the day. The black snake is the deadly foe of the Red Head, frequently entering his nest, feeding upon the young, and remaining for days in possession. "The eager school-boy, after hazarding his neck to reach the Woodpecker's hole, at the triumphant moment when he thinks the nestlings his own, strips his arm, launches it down into the cavity, and grasping what he conceives to be the callow young, starts with horror at the sight of a hideous snake, almost drops from his giddy pinnacle, and retreats down the tree with terror and precipitation." |