Natural
History
Notes
on the Birds
Roadrunner, Kingfisher, Woodpeckers,
Hummingbirds and Swifts
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About the
categories
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Name
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Common name
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Food
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The main food category.
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Feeding Techniques
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How it acquires its food.
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Habitat
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What kind of area does the bird
live?
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Plumage
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Is there similarity between the male
and the female, between winter and spring, young and adult,
or are there variations in the plumage amongst the species.
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Distribution
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Approximately where it is found in the
United States.
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Breeding
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Unique aspects on how the species
breeds.
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About the Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Special notes on the status or natural
history of this bird.
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Notes from A. C.
Bent
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Selections from the Life Histories of
North American Birds, edited by
A. C. Bent.
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Name
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Food
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Lizards, snakes, etc.
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Feeding
Techniques
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Runs on the ground to hunt
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Habitat
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Desert
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have the same plumage.
; no seasonal
difference
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Distribution
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Southwestern states
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Breeding
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Nest is a platform set off the ground
usually near a cactus or brush.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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The following section by Bent captures
the feeding behavior of the Roadrunner which is one of our
most entertaining birds.
flycatcherwise - refers to the habit
that flycatchers have to better hold the insects that they
catch.
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Sometimes, traveling in a motorcar, we
come upon him perched on a fence post or telegraph pole
close to the highway. Now we have opportunity to observe how
slim he is, how long his legs, how noticeable his crest. But
as we pass he leaps to the ground, swings off through the
cactus clumps, and is gone. Once more only a glimpse! Once
more only the retreat of a timid desert creature that
appears to be half bird, half reptile.
But lie in wait for the roadrunner!
Watch him race across the sand, full speed, after a lizard.
Watch him put out a wing, change his course, throw up his
tail, change his course again, plunge headlong into a clump
of cactus, and emerge, whacking his limp victim on the
ground. Watch him jerk a slender snake from the grass, fling
it into the air, grasp it by the head or neck, pummel it
with his hard mandibles, and gulp it head first. Watch him
stalk a grasshopper, slipping quietly forward, making a
sudden rush with wings and tail fully spread. frightening
the doomed insect into flight, then leaping 3 or 4 feet in
air to snatch it flycatcherwise in his long bill. Watch the
roadrunner for an hour at his daily business of catching
food and you will deem him among the most amazing of all the
desert's amazing creatures. Snake-killer indeed! Chaparral
cock! Not by sitting quietly on fence posts, not by slipping
shyly from the path, has the roadrunner earned for himself
these bloodstirring names!
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Name
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Food
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Caterpillars and other insects. One of
the few species of birds to feed on tent caterpillars.
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Feeding
Techniques
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Gleans food from branches of shrubs
and trees.
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Habitat
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Woodlands, orchards, riparian
groves
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have the same plumage.
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Distribution
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Primarily found in the eastern US but
can also be found in riparian woods of the southwest.
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Breeding
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Both sexes participate in building the
nest and feeding the young.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Nesting: Unlike the European cuckoo,
both of our North American species usually build their own
nests and rear their own young, though they are very poor
nest builders and are often careless about laying in each
other's nests or the nests of other species.
Major
Bendire (1895) gives the
following very good account of the nesting habits of the
yellow-billed cuckoo:
The Yellow-billed Cuckoo is one of the
poorest nest builders known to me, and undoubtedly the
slovenly manner in which it constructs its nest causes the
contents of many to be accidentally destroyed, and this
probably accounts to some extent for the many apparent
irregularities in their nesting habits. The nests are
shallow, frail platforms, composed of small rootlets,
sticks, or twigs, few of these being over 4 or 5 inches in
length, and among them a few dry leaves and bits of mosses;
rags, etc., are occasionally mixed in, and the surface is
lined with dry blossoms of the horse-chestnut and other
flowering plants, the male aments or catkins of oaks,
willows, etc., tufts of grasses, One and spruce needles, and
mosses of different kinds. These materials are loosely
placed on the top of the little platform, which is
frequently so small that the extremities of the bird project
on both sides, and there is scarcely any depression to keep
the eggs from rolling out even in only a moderate windstorm,
unless one of the parents sits on the nest, and it is
therefore not a rare occurrence to find broken eggs lying
under the trees or bushes in which the nests are placed.
Some of these are so slightly built that the eggs can be
readily seen through the bottom. An average nest measures
about 5 inches in outer diameter by 1 1/2 inches in depth.
They are rarely placed over 20 feet from the ground,
generally from 4 to 8 feet upon horizontal limbs of oak,
beech, gum, dogwood, hawthorn, mulberry, pine, cedar, fir,
apple, orange, fig, and other trees. Thick bushes
particularly such as are overrun with wild grape and other
vines as well as hedgerows, especially those of osage orange
are most frequently selected for nesting sites. The nests
are ordinarily well concealed by the overhanging and
surrounding foliage and while usually shy and timid at other
times, the Yellow-billed Cuckoo is generally courageous and
bold in the defense of its chosen home; the bird on the nest
not unfrequently will raise its feathers at right angles
from the body and occasionally even fly at the
intruder.
Of five Massachusetts nests, on which
I have notes, the lowest was only 2 feet above the ground in
some bushes, and the highest was 12 feet up in a crotch near
the top of an oak sapling in a swampy thicket near a brook.
Owen Durfee mentions in his notes a nest 5 feet up in a
juniper on the edge of a swamp. The others were at low
elevations in thickets along brooks.
A. D. DuBois has sent me his notes on
five Illinois nests; one of these was on the end of a branch
of an apple tree, 8 feet from the ground, near a country
schoolhouse; this nest contained 3 eggs of the cuckoo and a
robin's egg. Another was near the end of a branch in an
osage-orange hedge, 10 feet tip; still another was in an
isolated clump of willows, between a field and a pasture, 6
feet from the ground.
But cuckoos do not always nest in such
low situations; there are several records of their nesting
well up in elm trees. Grant Foreman (1924) tells of a pair
that nested on his place in Muskogee, Okla., for one or two
years, high up in an elm tree; he says: "The next year after
nesting in this inaccessible place, they built their nest in
a little elm tree in the parking, in a low limb overhanging
the curb on an asphalt street where hundreds of automobiles
were passing every day, and here in this exposed, noisy
place they raised a brood of young. This year they built
their nest in a little hackberry tree in the parking along
the side of my lot; but here also the nest was on a low limb
overhanging the curb on a paved street, and the ice wagon
stopped every morning directly under this nest, which was so
low down that the driver might have put his hand in
it."
George Finlay Simmons (1915) mentions
a nest that he found near Houston, Tex., on the horizontal
limb of a young pine near the edge, of some woods. He says
of it: "The nest was a slight platform about eleven feet up,
through which I could see with ease; it was composed of
small pine twigs, about an eighth of an inch in diameter and
averaging six or eight inches Iong, and was much more
concave than I had expected. This shallow saucer was neatly,
though quite thinly lined with a few pine needles, a small
quantity of Spanish moss and several tiny buds."
George. B. Sennett (1879) says that in
the Lower Rio Grande region of Texas "ebony trees near the
ranch, mesquites among cactuses, thorny bushes in open
chaparral, and open woodland, were favored breeding
places."
Wright and Harper (1913) found a
well-made nest in Okefinokee Swamp, in a tupelo tree at the
margin of the Suwannee. "It was placed in a cluster of
mistletoe on a horizontal branch four feet above the water,
and consisted of sticks interwoven with Spanish 'moss'
(Tillandsia usneoides)."
Dr. Harry C. Oberholser (1896) gives
the measurements of four nests; the average height of the
nests was 4 inches, and the greatest outside diameters
averaged 7.63 by 6.25 inches.
Both species of North American cuckoos
often lay their eggs in each other's nests. The eggs of the
yellow-billed cuckoo have been found several times in nests
of the robin and catbird. H. P. Attwater (1892) writes: "In
1884 I found a Dickcissel's
nest which contained five eggs and one Yellow-billed
Cuckoo's egg. The next year some boys brought me three
Black-throated Sparrow's eggs and one Yellow-billed
Cuckoo's, from the same field, which they said they found
all together in one nest." J. L. Davison (1887) says: "I
also found a nest of Merula
migratoria, taken
possession of by Coccyzus americanus before it was
finished, which was filled nearly full of rootlets; and in
this condition the Robin laid one egg and the Cuckoo laid
two and commenced incubation, when a Mourning
Dove (Zenaidura
macroura) also occupied it and laid two eggs and
commenced incubation with the Cuckoo. I found both birds on
the nest at the same time, when I secured nest and eggs. The
eggs of the Robin and Cuckoo were slightly incubated; those
of the Mourning Dove were fresh."
Bendire (1895) adds the wood thrush,
cedar
waxwing, and cardinal
to the list of birds that have been imposed upon, and says:
"Such instances appear to be much rarer, however, than those
in which they interlay with each other, and the majority of
these may well be due to accident, their own nest having
possibly been capsized, and it compelled the bird to deposit
its egg elsewhere. Such instances do occur at times with
species that can not possibly be charged with parasitic
tendencies." Marcia B. Clay (1929) thus describes the
cuckoo's method of gathering twigs for her nest:
Flying into an adjacent apple tree
containing a considerable quantity of dead material, the
Cuckoo landed on a limb, selected a dead twig, and grasping
it in her bill bent it back and forth until it snapped from
the limb, whereupon she flew with it to her nesting-site in
the next tree, arranged this twig and quickly returned for
another. As she tugged at a stubborn twig, her back was
arched and very long tail curved under or waved about If a
twig resisted too well her attack, the bird desisted at once
and tried another. Always she worked rapidly with great
energy, attacking a twig as soon as she landed in the tree,
never carrying more than one twig at a time, holding It
squarely at right angles to her bill and flying rapidly with
long tail streaming.
The Cuckoo's concentration in the
work, coupled with her indifference to observers, was
remarkable. Not once did she descend to the ground for
material. Not once did she gather material in the tree in
which her nest was located. With two exceptions the twigs
were all gathered from the same tree. Working thus off and
on for an hour or two at a time, the bird completed the
nest. The third night the Cuckoo was sitting on the nest at
dusk, but after two days she deserted.
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Name
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Food
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Insects
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Feeding
Techniques
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Forages on the ground and in
bushes
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Habitat
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Open country with thickets
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have the same plumage.
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Distribution
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Southern most part of Texas
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Breeding
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Twig nest built by both sexes in tree.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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This Central and South American
species was added to our fauna by George
B. Sennett (1879), who secured
a fine male on May 19, 1878, near Lomita, Tex., while it was
"flying about the low bushes in open chaparral. It was very
shy, flying in and about the bushes, and was shot on the
wing." The only one I have ever seen did not seem at all
shy. I was sitting down, quietly watching some Texas
sparrows that were hopping around on the ground near me, in
some thick brush bordering a resaca near Brownsville, Tex.,
when one of these curious birds appeared. It seemed more
curious than shy, as it moved about slowly in the bushes,
looking me over; it remained in my vicinity for some time
and I could have shot it easily. It is said to show a
preference for thick underbrush in the vicinity of water, or
for lightly wooded swamps.
In his proposed work on the birds of
the Caribbean lowlands, Alexander
F. Skutch devotes two long and
very interesting chapters to the home life of the
groove-billed ani. He has kindly placed at my disposal his
unpublished manuscript and allowed me to quote freely from
it. As to its haunts, he writes: "The variety of the habitat
of the anis is enormous and their only restriction seems to
be that they do not tolerate the forest and are never seen
there. They are birds of open country but seem nearly
indifferent to its type. In the inhabited districts of the
humid coastal regions they are one of the most conspicuous
species. Their favorite haunts are bushy pastures, orchards,
the lighter second growth, and even lawns and clearings
about the native huts. Marshland is as acceptable to them as
a well-drained hillside, and they are numerous in such
extensive stands of sawgrass as that surrounding the Toloa
Lagoon in Honduras, although it is probable that they do not
venture far from some outstanding hummock or ridge which
supports a few low bushes in which they can roost and nest,
in the semidesert regions of the interior, where their
associates of the coast lands, if present at all, are as a
rule rare and restricted to the moist thickets along the
rivers, they are among the most numerous of birds, and live
among scattered cacti and acacias as successfully as amid
the rankest vegetation of the districts watered by 12 feet
of rainfall in the year. In altitude they range upward to
5,000 feet, but are not nearly so numerous in the elevated
districts as in the lowlands."
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Name
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Food
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Fish
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Feeding
Techniques
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Hovers in the air and dives into the
water to grab fish
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Habitat
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Water areas
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have similar plumage.
Female has a red stripe on
chest
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Distribution
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Throughout the US
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Breeding
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Nest is a burrow created by both sexes
in a dirt bank
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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The following Bent selection points
out a problem that has been around for a long time: the
competition between humans and non-human animals for the
same food.
In the second paragraph there is an
example of anthropomorphism,
which is the attributing to non-human animals, the emotions
and motivation of humans. To characterize the rattle sound
of the kingfisher as laughter towards a hawk that had chased
it has no zoological support.
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Enemies: The most serious enemies of
the kingfisher are the selfish fisherman, who wants all the
fish for himself and begrudges the poor bird an honest
living, and the proprietor of a trout hatchery, who is
unwilling to go to the trouble and expense of screening his
pools to protect his fish. The former shoots every
kingfisher he can with misguided satisfaction; the latter
either shoots or traps any that visit his pools. A small,
unbaited, steel trap is set and fastened to the top of a
stake or post near the bird's favorite fishing pool; if the
trap is so set that the pan is at the highest point, the
bird is almost sure to alight on it and is caught. Hundreds
of kingfishers are caught and killed in this way along
private trout streams, or about trout hatcheries, every
year.
The natural enemies of the kingfisher
are of no great menace to its welfare. The Cooper's
and the sharp-shinned
hawks often pursue it, perhaps
largely for sport; under the accounts of these two hawks, in
a previous volume, will be found references to these attacks
and the successful attempts of the kingfisher to escape by
diving; it even seems as if the kingfisher enjoyed the
sport, judged by its derisive "laughter" at the defeat of
the hawk.
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Name
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Food
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Fish
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Feeding
Techniques
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Dives from a low hanging
perch.
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Habitat
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Riparian woods
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Plumage
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The
male and the female have similar plumage.
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Distribution
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Southern part of Texas and
Arizona
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Breeding
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Nests in burrow in bank
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Food: The food mentioned by Mr. Skutch
(MS.) consisted of small minnows. Mr. Simmons (1925) says
that this kingfisher is a "business-like little fisherman,
perching atop a stick or stake in the water or on a low
branch overhanging low water"; it "frequently flies back and
forth over the water, hunting for small fish." It's often
driven off feeding-grounds by the larger Belted Kingfisher,
with which it is sometimes found."
Enemies: The first set of eggs that
Mr.
Skutch found failed to hatch,
as they were destroyed by ants. He writes (MS.): "Opening
the burrow, I found it swarming with myriads of small, amber
'fire ants,' a scourge to man and beast alike. Invading the
nest, they had worried the birds until they fidgeted on
their eggs and cracked them; then they had worked into the
cracks and begun to eat the embryos. I had cleaned them out
the previous evening, but all to no avail. The nest was
completely ruined. That same morning they had attacked and
killed three young woodpeckers in their nest in a dead stub
standing a few paces from the kingfishers' burrow. In the
humid coastal regions, ants are one of the principal
enemies, if not actually the chief enemy, of nesting birds.
I have found more eggs and nestlings destroyed by them than
by all other known agents combined."
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Name
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Food
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Fruit and insects
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Feeding
Techniques
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Foraging and chasing insects like a
flycatcher
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Habitat
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Southeastern Arizona wooded
canyons
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Plumage
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Sexes have different
plumage
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Distribution
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A few birds visit each year, and some
nest in extreme southeastern part of Arizona.
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Breeding
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Nests in tree cavities
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Behavior: F. H. Fowler (1903)
writes:
On June 9, 1892, my father and I
accompanied Dr. A. K. Fisher to Garden Canyon seven miles
south of the post. We reached the canyon and were riding up
the narrow trail bordered with pines and live oaks, when
suddenly a beautiful male trogan flew across the path just
ahead of us, and perched on a live oak bush on the other
side of the small stream which flows through the canyon. The
Doctor tried to approach it, but the noise caused by his
passage through the thick brush and over the sliding rocks
on the hill side alarmed the bird, which from the first had
seemed a trifle uneasy, and it was soon lost to view among
the trees down the canyon.
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Name
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Food
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Insects, fruit
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Feeding
Techniques
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Flycatches after insects
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Habitat
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Plumage
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The adult male and female have the
same plumage.
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Distribution
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Western United States
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Breeding
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Nest is cavity in tree; usually
excavated by male.
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About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
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Notes from A.C.
Bent
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Food: Referring to the food of Lewis's
woodpecker, Major
Bendire (1895)
writes:
In summer its food consists mainly of
insects of different kinds, such as grasshoppers, large
black crickets, ants, beetles, flies, larva of different
kinds, as well as of berries, like wild strawberries and
raspberries, service berries and salmon berries, acorns,
pine seeds, and juniper berries, while in cultivated
districts cherries and other small fruits enter into its
daily bill of fare. Here, when common, it may occasionally
do some little damage in the orchards, but this is fully
compensated by the noxious insects it destroys at the same
time. In localities where grasshoppers are abundant they
live on these pests almost exclusively while they last. Mr.
Shelly W. Denton tells me he noticed this Woodpecker
gathering numbers of May flies (Ephemera) and sticking them
in crevices of pines, generally in trees in which it nested,
evidently putting them away for future use, as they lasted
but a few days. It is an expert flycatcher, and has an
extremely keen vision, sallying forth frequently after some
small insect when this is perhaps fully 100 feet from its
perch.
On this latter subject, Mr. Rathbun
writes to me:
Lewis's woodpecker is an expert at
catching insects on the wing. When in this act, its perch is
some vantage spot such as the top of a dead tree or a bare
limb in the open. Here it sits motionless, except to turn
its head from side to side on the lookout for its prey; and
when this is seen, the bird glides from its resting place to
make a capture. On one occasion for more than an hour, we
watched a pair of these woodpeckers seize flying insects,
and in that length of time not less than 35 were taken.
Through our field glasses we kept a close watch on the birds
and soon learned from their actions when an insect was
sighted, thus it was easy for us to anticipate its capture,
and in not a single instance was a failure made by either of
the birds. Once, a light puff of air changed the course of
the insect just at the time it was about to be taken, but
the woodpecker made a quick turn upward at the same time,
dropped its legs straight down, and neatly made the take.
When busy catching insects on the wing, this bird leaves its
perch by easy wing beats or a long, slow, graceful glide;
then, after its prey is caught, rises in its flight and,
quickly wheeling, returns to its lookout station.
But, as if not content with hunting
insects after the manner of a flycatcher, sometimes this
bird mingles with the swallows as they hawk over the ground.
On one occasion in summer, as we came to a very open
pasture, we noticed numbers of barn
and cliff
swallows in flight over it
after insects, and in company with them was a pair of
Lewis's woodpeckers. Back and forth over the meadow flew
these dark birds, busy in an attempt to catch flying
insects, and their actions as they flew were in marked
contrast to those of the graceful swallows. Although we
watched the woodpeckers for more than half an hour,
throughout that time neither one alighted; and when we left
the place both still coursed busily above the
field.
About one-third of the food of Lewis's
woodpecker consists of acorns. It shares with the
California
woodpecker the interesting
habit of storing acorns, though its method of storing them
is quite different, for it seldom, if ever, makes the neat
round holes to fit the acorns, so characteristic of the
other species; and its stores of acorns are never so
extensive, so systematic, or so conspicuous as those of the
California woodpecker. Charles W. Michael (1926)
writes:
Recently we watched a Lewis Woodpecker
making trips back and forth between a Kellogg oak and his
home tree, a cottonwood. He was busy storing away his winter
supply of acorns. Occasionally he picked a fallen acorn from
the ground; more often he flew into the lesser branches of
the oak, and hanging like a great black chickadee he plucked
the acorn from the cup. With crow-like fiappings, his broad
wings carried him back to the dead cottonwood with his prize
In his bill. Alighting somewhat below the summit of his tree
he would, by a series of flight jumps, come to a certain
shattered stub where a fissure formed a vise. Into this he
would wedge the acorn.
With the acorn held firmly In place he
would set about cutting away the hull, and strong strokes of
his bill would soon split away the shell and expose the
kernel. But he was not satisfied in merely making the kernel
accessible, he must go on with his pounding until he had
broken It into several pieces, and then with a piece in his
bill he would dive into the air like a gymnast, drop twenty
or thirty feet and come with an upward swoop to perch on the
trunk of the same tree. A few hitching movements would bring
him to a deep crack that opened Into the heart of the tree.
Here he would carefully poke away, for future reference, his
morsel. Usually the acorn was cut into four parts, involving
four such trips, and on the last trip to the vise he would
take the empty hull In his bill, and with a jerk of his
head, toss it into the air. An examination of the ground
beneath the tree disclosed hundreds of empty acorn shells.
Holding a watch on the Lewis Woodpecker, we found that he
made five trips in five minutes and stored five
acorns.
J. Eugene Law (1929) has published
another illuminating paper on this subject, which is well
worth reading; he describes in considerable detail the
woodpeckers' methods in storing the meats of acorns in
cracks in poles and indulges in some speculation as to the
causes and purposes involved in the habit.
Herbert Brown (1902) found Lewis's
woodpeckers quite destructive to pomegranates and quinces,
near Tucson, Ariz. On September 30 he counted ten in the
pomegranate groves; "they were mostly feeding on pomegranate
fruit. They first cut a hole through the hard skin of the
fruit and then extract the pulp, leaving nothing but an
empty shell." Later, on October 13, he says: "Now that the
pomegranate crop has been destroyed they have commenced to
eat the quinces, of which there are large quantities. On the
tops of some of the bushes I noticed that every quince had
been eaten into, one side -of the fruit being generally
eaten away."
William E. Sherwood (1927)
writes:
On June 16, 1923, while collecting
near Imnaha, Wallowa County, Oregon, I frightened a Lewis
woodpecker from the top of a fence post where it was
evidently having a feast. On top of the post it had left a
fresh egg, probably its own; for it was absolutely fresh, of
the right size, and unmarked. The shell had been broken
into, but the contents not yet extracted.
In a knothole on the side of the post
was an eggshell (of the same kind), and a snail shell which
had been broken into. Wedged into the cracks of the post
were several insects (some of them still alive) of the two
species commonly known as "salmon flies" and "trout flies."
On the ground at the foot of the post were several snail
shells, a green prune (picked into), and several cherry
seeds with stems attached.
Johnson A. Neff (1928) has much to say
about the economic status of this woodpecker, mainly in
Oregon. A few quotations from his paper will serve to show
the vast amount of damage to the fruit grower that it does
in sections where it is abundant, mainly in summer and fall.
He says that Prof. Beal (1911) "mentions one case in
Washington wherein the birds tore the paper at the corners
of packed boxes of apples left in the orchard over night,
picking into every apple within reach, and necessitating the
repacking of every box attacked."
S. D. Hill wrote to Mr.
Neff:
In some sections and seasons they will
destroy carloads of fruit, especially in orchards near
timber. I have known them to do 50 percent damage to a pear
crop in the Peyton district on upper Rogue River." Jackson
Gyger, Ashland, wrote: "In 1924 the loss on Spitz and
Delicious apples was about 75 percent, on Newtowns about 15
percent; Bosc and Anion pears about 10 percent. The loss on
trees near oak timber was nearly 100 percent. This season
(1925) due to hunting them every day the loss was possibly
50 percent less. I bought $18.00 worth of ammunition to
combat them this year. One man can not keep them out of a
seven acre orchard, as they will work on one end while you
are scaring them out of the other.
Mr. Neff goes on to say:
These complaints can not be
over-looked, for stomach analyses show only the volume of
fruit eaten, not the percentage of fruit damaged per tree,
nor the real loss to the orchardist. * * *
In Oregon, although it sometimes
becomes a nuisance in the small fruit plantings of various
areas, it centers its destructive activities in the Rogue
Valley; there it flocks in the greatest abundance. * *
*
In this area there can be no question
of the objectionable status of the Lewis woodpecker. If the
birds would consume each fruit injured, there would be
little complaint of their taking the quantity which probably
would satisfy them. They are restless and energetic,
however, and always attacking fresh fruit, which with one
stroke of the bill is ruined for commercial use. If one
allows only one bite to each fruit, some of the stomachs
studied would have contained the samples of as high as two
bushels of fruit In the restricted areas mentioned the Lewis
woodpecker is a pest.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Acorns
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Stores acorns in trees
|
|
Habitat
|
Chaparral grassland, oak
woodlands
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have similar plumage.
Female has less red on
forehead
|
|
Distribution
|
Pacific coast states and
Arizona
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
This is an amazing account of how many
acorns a group of Acorn Woodpeckers could fit on a single
oak tree. Acorn Woodpeckers are colonial birds and have been
known to collectively store acorns in a tree that they will
share during the winter.
carpintero - referring to the Acorn
Woodpecker as a carpenter.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
In Tecolote Canyon, west of Santa
Barbara, there is a giant sycamore which I count one of the
handsomest examples of Carpintero's workmanship: an unbroken
shaft, at least forty feet high and three feet across the
inlaid face, covered with a "solid" mass of acorns
totalling, say, some 20,000. Strawberry Valley in the San
Jacinto Mountains appears to be a paradise for the
California Woodpecker. Here majestic oaks (Quercus
californica) alternate with still more majestic pines
(Pinus ponderosa), the former for sustenance and the
latter for storage, and the doughty "California" is probably
the most abundant bird in the valley. The holes of the most
enormous pines are methodically riddled with their
acorn-carrying niches, and in some of the trees the work is
carried through from base to crown. In one such tree I
estimated that there were imbedded no less than 50,000
acorns.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Insects
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Gleans insects from branches in
addition to drilling in trees for insects
|
|
Habitat
|
Young forests, parks
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have similar plumage.
Male has red crown and female
does not
|
|
Distribution
|
Throughout the US
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
An interesting account that suggests
that different species may work together to form stronger
protection by being together, than by being on their own.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Behavior: Writing of the habits of
these woodpeckers in the sandhills of North Carolina, Milton
P. Skinner (1928) says:
They are seen at times with
Chickadees, red-cockaded woodpeckers, Brownheaded
Nuthatches, Kinglets and Juncos. And these associations seem
to be actual and usual, and not temporary and accidental
ones as they are between most birds of different species.
The downy woodpeckers are peaceable little fellows but other
birds will impose on them. I have seen a yellow-bellied
sapsucker and a mob of three
or four English
Sparrows near Pine Bluff
chasing one about. But downy was a fast flier and outflew
all his tormentors each time. Their flight is undulating and
typical of the woodpecker family. These woodpeckers have one
trait of the Brown
Creepers: they prefer to work
up a tree and fly down to the base of the next
one.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Insects
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Drills for insects
|
|
Habitat
|
More mature forests than
Downy
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have similar plumage.
Male has red crown and female
does not
|
|
Distribution
|
Throughout the US
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
When I consider the advantage of the
Hairy Woodpecker spending time with rough-bark trees over
smooth-barked trees, and I remember that it eats mostly
insects, I figure that there are a lot more insects to be
found in the crevices of the rough barked tree than the
smooth barked tree.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Behavior: The hairy woodpecker is a
much shier, more retiring bird than the confiding little
downy;
it is also more active and noisier; it usually will not
allow such close approach but will dodge around the trunk of
a tree or fly away, if an intruder comes too near, bounding
through the air in a series of graceful dips and rebounds.
Rex Brasher (1926) followed one for four hours that alighted
"on two hundred and eighteen different trees, an average of
nearly one a minute! The longest time he remained on one
tree was seven minutes. This was a dead chestnut with most
of the bark still adhering. By far the larger proportion of
the trees were old chestnuts, and under their loosely
attached covering he found most successful hunting.
Rough-bark species were preferred: chestnuts, oaks, old
maples and hickories, about in the order named.
Smooth-barked ones received little notice."
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Insects
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Sometimes feeds on the ground to get
ants; also drills trees for insects
|
|
Habitat
|
Diverse habitats
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have similar plumage.
Female does not have a red
"moustache"
|
|
Distribution
|
Throughout the US
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Courtship: The courtship of the
flicker is a lively and spectacular performance, noisy, full
of action, and often ludicrous, as three or more birds of
both sexes indulge in their comical dancing, nodding,
bowing, and swaying motions, or chase each other around the
trunk or through the branches of a tree. From the time of
Audubon to the present day, many observers have noted and
described the curious antics of this star performer. But I
prefer to quote first from some extensive notes recently
contributed by Francis H. Allen, as follows: "The courtship
of the flicker is an elaborate and somewhat puzzling
performance. Two birds face each other on the branch of a
tree or cling side by side, though at a little distance
apart, on the trunk, and spread their tails and jerk their
heads about in a sort of weaving motion, frequently uttering
a note that is peculiar to this performance, a wick-up or
weekup. The head motion is a series of backward jerks with
the bill pointing up at an angle of perhaps 60 degrees and
the head at the same time swinging from side to side.
Sometimes a short, low wuck is uttered from time to time
during the performance. These bouts occur not only between
male and female, but frequently between two males or two
females.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Insects
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Creates large holes in trees to find
food
|
|
Habitat
|
Diverse habitat; mature forests in the
Northwest, and diverse forests in the east
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have similar plumage.
; female does not have red on
her forehead
|
|
Distribution
|
Eastern United States and Pacific
Northwest
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
Competition for nesting sites is very
intense between different species. There are only so many
cavities to go around as the story below demonstrates.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Audubon
(1842) relates the following story, as told to him by the
Rev. John
Bachman: "A pair of pileated
woodpeckers had a nest in an old elm tree, in a swamp, which
they occupied that year; the next spring early, two
blue-birds took possession of it, and there had young.
Before these were half grown, the woodpeckers returned to
the place, and, despite of the cries and reiterated attacks
of the blue-birds, the others took the young, not very
gently, as you may imagine, and carried them away to some
distance. Next the nest itself was disposed of, the hole
cleaned and enlarged, and there they raised a brood. The
nest, it is true, was originally their own."
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Insects
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Probing the trunk of a tree
|
|
Habitat
|
Coniferous forests
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have similar plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Pacific states
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
The northern race of the white-headed
woodpecker is found in the Cascade Mountains and the Sierra
Nevada, from Washington to Kern County, Calif., and eastward
into western Idaho and western Nevada.
It is a bird of the pine and fir
forests in the mountains, ranging from 4,000 to 9,000 feet
during the breeding season, but coming down to lower levels
in winter. W.
L. Dawson (1923) says: "This
woodpecker is essentially a pine-loving species and is,
therefore, nearly confined to the slopes of the Sierras and
the Transition zones of the southern ranges. Only in winter
does it appear at lower levels, and then rarely beyond the
pale of the yellow pine. So close is this devotion of bird
to tree that the woodpecker's feathers are almost always
smeared with pine pitch; and I have found eggs dotted with
pitch and soiled to blackness by contact with the sitting
bird."
Clarence F. Smith writes to me that he
found this woodpecker very common around a camp where he was
located from June 25 to July 10, 1935, in Tuolumne County,
Calif., in the Transition Zone at an elevation of about
4,000 feet. The camp was at one time a lumbering mill, and
there was much dead standing timber nearby. Most of the
trees were Pinus ponderosa and Pinus
lambertianti.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Insects,
tree sap (See below)
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Drilling a series of small holes in
selected trees, from which it obtains the sap of the tree.
|
|
Habitat
|
Variety of wooded habitats depending
on the season
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have similar plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Pacific states
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
The word, well, in the section below
refers to the holes that the sapsuckers typically drill in
the trunks of trees so they can eat the sap that comes up
from the holes. In one sense they are "sugar wells" just
like "oil wells". There is debate on the percentage that sap
plays in the diet of the sapsuckers.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Food: The food of the red-breasted
sapsucker is much like that of its close relatives in the
various group. M. P. Skinner writes to me: "I have found
red-breasted sapsuckers drilling on cottonwoods, willows,
yellow pines, and lodgepole pines; but all the actual
feeding I have seen was on willows. Mr. Michael tells me
that these birds work largely on the apple trees that have
been planted in various parts of the Yosemite Valley. When a
sapsucker is at its wells, it takes a sip now and then, but
considerable time is used in watchful guarding, or in
driving away intruders or would-be robbers. In the case of
such wells as I found on willow stems, I could see no
established regularity in arrangement. They looked as if the
bark had been irregularly scaled off. In fact, such work may
be necessary to secure the inner bark; yet the birds
actually took sap at such wells. One had a dozen willow
stems on which it drilled and sipped in succession; each one
was only a few inches from the next; and the bark of each,
both above and below the wells, was worn smooth. This bird
went from well to well in regular order, then back to the
first well to begin again. Although sap formed the bulk of
their food in August, I have seen them also searching the
bark for insects during that same month."
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Insects,
tree sap
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Drilling a series of small holes in
selected trees, from which it obtains the sap of the tree.
|
|
Habitat
|
Mountainous forests
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have different plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Western United States
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
A very interesting account of the
confusion in determining which birds are related to each
other. As far as I know this is the only example found in
the US of a species where the plumage difference between the
male and the female are so great that they were considered
different species.
This is an interesting group of
people. Cassin, Baird, and Lawrence, each have at least one
species of bird named after them: Cassin's Finch, Baird's
Sandpiper, and Lawrence's Goldfinch.
"suspicious proximity" means that the
two birds were in the same area.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Williamson's sapsucker is not only one
of our most unique woodpeckers in its striking coloration,
but it has an interesting history. Owing to the radical
difference in appearance between the two sexes, they were
for some time regarded as two distinct, species. The female
was the first to be described by John
Cassin (1852, p. 349), based
on a specimen collected by John
G. Bell in Eldorado County,
Calif. Under the name black-breasted woodpecker
(Melanerpes thyroideus), Cassin describes and figures
(1854) the adult female as the male of the species and says
of the female:
"Similar to the male, but with the
colors more obscure, and the black of the breast of less
extent and not so deep in shade," which is a very fair
description of the immature female. The male was discovered
and described and figured by Dr. Newberry (1857) under the
name Picus williamsonii, based on a specimen
collected by him on August 23, 1855, on the shores of
Klamath Lake, Oreg. Baird, Cassin, and Lawrence (1860) give
a very good description of an adult male, as the male of the
species, but say "female with the chin white instead of
red," which, of course, is the immature male. Thus we have
the adult of each sex regarded as the male of a species, and
the young bird of each sex regarded as the female of a
species. With careless, or improper, sexing of specimens,
such an error might easily occur, but it is remarkable that
it remained so long undiscovered. Baird,Cassin, and Lawrence
(1860) describe the male as Sphyrapicus williamsonii
Baird, Williamson's woodpecker, and the female as
Sphyrapicus thyroideus Baird, brown-headed
woodpecker. J. G. Cooper (1870), in the Geological Survey of
California, edited by Baird, follows the same error but
calls the female the round-headed woodpecker. Even Baird,
Brewer, and Ridgway, in their history of North American
Birds, had not discovered the error, for they use
substantially the same nomenclature.
It remained for Henry W. Henshaw
(1875) to discover the true relationship of the two supposed
species and clear up the previous misunderstanding. He
writes: "While near Fort Garland, I obtained abundant proof
of the specific identity of the two birds in question;
williamsonii being the male of thyroideus. Though led to
suspect this, from finding the two birds in suspicious
proximity, it was some time before I could procure a pair
actually mated. A nest was at length discovered, excavated
in the trunk of a live aspen, and both the parent birds were
secured as they flew from the hole, having just entered with
food for the newly hatched young."
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Insects,
tree sap
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Drilling a series of small holes in
selected trees, from which it obtains the sap of the tree.
|
|
Habitat
|
Woodlands; mixed coniferous and
deciduous trees.
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have different plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Eastern US
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Spring: It is spring in the Transition
Zone when in April the yellow-bellied sapsucker passes
through on the way from its winter quarters to its breeding
ground in the Canadian Zone. If spring is tardy most of the
trees may be leafless, but many of them have blossomed, and
the sap is running.
At this season the sapsucker is
light-hearted and jaunty compared to the sober, quiet bird
that visited us the autumn before. The breeding season is
near at hand, and if two birds meet they often engage in a
sort of game, a precursory courtship, wherein one bird flies
at the other in a playful attack; the other eludes the rush
of the oncoming bird by a sudden, last-minute retreat:
winding around the branch on which it rests, or sliding off
into the air. In these pursuits in and out among the
branches we are impressed by the agility and grace of the
birds and by the easy way they direct their course through
the air. They do not appear to impel themselves by strength
of wing alone, but, especially in their slanting descents,
they let the force of gravity pull them swiftly along, and
then, by the impetus of the speed attained, glide upward to
a perch. They seem to swing from branch to branch with
little effort, slowly opening and closing their wings to
guide them on their way. As we watch them we are reminded of
trapeze artists in the circus.
But the new sap is running, and the
birds quickly tap the supply by drilling into the bark of
their favorite trees and drink of the sap as it flows freely
from the wounds.
Every spring the birds come to a
sturdy yellow birch tree on the Boston Public Garden, a
species of tree with which they must be familiar on their
breeding grounds in the north. The sap flows plenteously in
mid-April from the many punctures that the birds make; it
wets a large portion of the trunk of the tree and often
drips to the ground from the branches. The birds stand clear
of the tree as they feed at the sap wells with only the feet
and the tip of the tail touching the bark. The tail is
braced against the trunk at an angle of about 45 degrees and
the feet reach far forward to grasp the bark opposite the
bend of the wing. I have never seen a sapsucker crouch
against this wet bark as a downy woodpecker commonly does
when digging out a grub: like a cat hunched up lapping a
saucer of milk. When a bird wishes to move to a point below
where it is perched, it jumps from the tree and floats in
the air, then turning, with its wings held out somewhat,
dives bead-downward, drifting in an easy, leisurely manner
as if moving under water; then, just before alighting, it
rights itself. If you come too near, the sapsucker scrambles
around to the rear of the limb, and if you step close up to
the tree, the bird starts away in free, sweeping curves,
like a skater over the ice, the white in the wing flashing
out.
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Insects,
tree sap
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Drilling a series of small holes in
selected trees, from which it obtains the sap of the tree.
|
|
Habitat
|
Variety of wooded habitats depending
on the season
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have similar plumage.
; sometimes male has more red
in the nape than the female.
|
|
Distribution
|
Western United States, though usually
not found on the Pacific states
|
|
Breeding
|
Nest is in tree cavity, excavated by
both sexes
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
Behavior: John H. Flanagan (1911)
witnessed a rather remarkable performance by a red-naped
sapsucker, such as I had not seen recorded elsewhere. He had
chopped out a nest containing two fresh eggs and was
intending to leave them for a possible addition to the set,
as he had done successfully before, when one of the birds,
"both of which remained in sight, flew to the tree, perched
a moment upon the edge of the cut hole, then went in, and
shortly reappeared with one of the eggs in its beak. It flew
to a nearby stub, not more than forty feet from where" he
"was sitting, calmly devoured the egg and dropped the empty
shell."
|
|
Name
|
|
|
Food
|
Larvae of various insects and fruit.
|
|
Feeding
Techniques
|
Forages in cacti and trees
|
|
Habitat
|
Desert
|
|
Plumage
|
The
male and the female have similar plumage.
|
|
Distribution
|
Southwest US
|
|
Breeding
|
Nests in cavity in trees or cactus.
|
|
About the Notes
from A.C. Bent
|
Cactus Woodpecker is an old name for
Ladder-backed Woodpecker. (Dryobates S. cactophilus) is an
older scientific name for Ladder-bakced Woodpecker.
The Gilded Flicker mentioned below is
now considered a sub-species of the Northern
Flicker.
P. pubescens is a reference to the
Downy Woodpecker.
|
|
Notes from A.C.
Bent
|
The cactus woodpecker ranges,
according to the 1931 AOU Check-List, from "central western
Texas through New Mexico and Arizona to extreme northeastern
Lower California and southeastern California, north to
extreme southern Nevada and southwestern Utah, and south to
northern Durango." It frequents the deserts, or the borders
of the deserts, and the lower slopes of the mountains in the
Sonoran Zone, a hot, dry region where there are no trees of
any size and where this is about the only species of
woodpecker found. We never found it in the giant-cactus, or
saguaro, region, where it seemed to be replaced by the noisy
Gila
woodpecker and Mearns's gilded
flicker. W. Leon Dawson (1923) says:
Of course it must not be understood
that the Cactus Woodpecker tries to live In the central
wastes of the desert; for however much it may forage over
the creosote
and cholla patches, on occasion, it requires something of
more ample girth for a nesting site. Hence its breeding
range is confined to the more fruitful upper edges of the
Lower Sonoran zone, and to the moister bottoms. In the
former situation the dried stalks of the agave and the
lesser yucca (whippici), or of the Joshua tree
(Yucca
arborescena), and the Mobave
Yucca offer asylum. In the valley of the Colorado, fearing
no rivalry from P.
pubescens lunch, the Cactus
Woodpecker is able to monopolize the willows which grow so
rankly along the lagoons.
Referring to Arizona, Harry S. Swarth
(1904) says: "This woodpecker is seldom seen above 5,500
feet, and rarely ventures into the canyons. On the plains
below, wherever there is brush or trees, and all along the
San Pedro River it is very common, as in fact, I have found
it in all similar places I have visited in southern
Arizona."
Swarth says elsewhere
(1929):
In southeastern Arizona, east of the
Santa Rita Mountains, the vast areas of prairie land are for
the most part unsuitable to this species. Wherever even a
scanty growth of chaparral has found a foothold, though, the
Cactus Woodpecker is pretty sure to occur, for it does not
require large trees. Along the streams and washes in this
same area, as elsewhere, it does frequent the sycamores and
other larger growths, but these do not form the preferred
habitat. In the lowlands west of the Santa Rita Mountains
this woodpecker is in the surroundings that suit it best. It
does not frequent the giant cactus (I do not believe that
there is a known instance of its nesting in one), but stays
nearer the ground, in cholla cactus, creosote bush, catelaw
or other lowgrowing vegetation.
Nesting: Major Bendire (1895)
writes:
In southern New Mexico and Arizona it
nests sometimes in the flowering stems of the agave plant
and also in yucca trees, and I have found it nesting on
Billito Creek, Arizona, in a small dead willow sapling not
over 3½ inches in diameter. The cavity was about 12
feet from the ground and 10 inches in depth, and the
entrance hole a trifle over 1½ inches in diameter. This
nest was found on June 8, 1872, and contained only two eggs,
in which incubation was about one-half advanced; the eggs
laid on fine chips. The nesting sites are placed at various
distances from the ground, from 3 to 30, usually from 11 to
14 feet. Dead branches of trees or partly decayed ones seem
to be preferred to live ones. * * * It nests by preference
in mesquite
trees, one of our hardest
woods, and it must require a long time to chisel out a
nesting site in one of these trees. While it is true that
the heart is usually more or less decayed, the birds have
first to work through an inch or two of solid wood which is
almost impervious to a sharp ax.
Mrs.
Florence M. Bailey (1928) says
that in New Mexico the nests are "from 2 to 30 feet from the
ground in holes in mesquite, screw bean, palo verde,
hackberry, and China trees, willows, cottonwoods, walnuts,
oaks, and other trees, telegraph poles, fence posts, and
stalks of agave, yucca, and cactus."
While collecting with Frank C.
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