Length -- 8.50 to 9.75 inches. An inch or less smaller than the
robin.
Male and Female -- Head, neck, and throat crimson; breast and
underneath white; back black and white; wings and tail blue
black, with broad white band on wings conspicuous in flight.
Range -- United States, east of Rocky Mountains and north to
Manitoba.
Migrations -- Abundant but irregular migrant. Most commonly seen
in Autumn, and rarely resident.
In thinly populated sections, where there are few guns about, this is still
one of the commonest as it is perhaps the most conspicuous member of the
woodpecker family, but its striking glossy black-and-white body and its still
more striking crimson head, flattened out against the side of a tree like a
target, where it is feeding, have made it all too tempting a mark for the
rifles of the sportsmen and the sling-shots of small boys. As if sufficient
attention were not attracted to it by its plumage, it must needs keep up a
noisy, guttural rattle, ker-r-ruck,
ker-r-ruck, very like a tree-toad's call, and flit about among the trees with
the restlessness of a fly-catcher. Yet, in spite of these invitations for a
shot to the passing gunner, it still multiplies in districts where nuts
abound, being "more common than the robin" about Washington, says John
Burroughs.
All the familiar woodpeckers have two characteristics most prominently
exemplified in this red-headed member of their tribe. The hairy, the downy,
the crested, the red-bellied, the sapsucker, and the flicker have each a red
mark somewhere about their heads as if they had been wounded there and bled a
little -- some more, some less; and the figures of all of them, from much
flattening against tree-trunks, have become high-shouldered and long-waisted.
The red-headed woodpecker selects, by preference, a partly decayed tree in
which to excavate a hole for its nest, because the digging is easier, and the
sawdust and chips make a softer lining than green wood. Both male and female
take turns in this hollowing-out process. The one that is off duty is allowed
twenty minutes for refreshments, "consisting of grubs, beetles, ripe apples or
cherries, corn, or preferably beech-nuts. At a loving call from its mate in
the hollow tree, it returns promptly to perform its share of the work, when
the carefully observed time is up." The heap of sawdust at the bottom of the
hollow will eventually cradle from four to six glossy-white eggs.
This woodpecker has the thrifty habit of storing away nuts in the knot-holes
of trees, between cracks in the bark, or in decayed fence rails--too often a
convenient storehouse at which the squirrels may help themselves. But it is
the black snake that enters the nest and eats the young family, and that is a
more deadly foe than even the sportsman or the milliner.