The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woodpeckers, by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm
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Title: The Woodpeckers
Author: Fannie Hardy Eckstorm
Release Date: January 25, 2011 [EBook #35062]
Language: English
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[Illustration]
THE WOODPECKERS
BY
FANNIE HARDY ECKSTORM
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY FANNIE HARDY ECKSTORM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_To_ MY FATHER MR. MANLY HARDY _A Lifelong Naturalist_
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
FOREWORD: THE RIDDLERS 1
I. HOW TO KNOW A WOODPECKER 4
II. HOW THE WOODPECKER CATCHES A GRUB 9
III. HOW THE WOODPECKER COURTS HIS MATE 15
IV. HOW THE WOODPECKER MAKES A HOUSE 20
V. HOW A FLICKER FEEDS HER YOUNG 24
VI. FRIEND DOWNY 28
VII. PERSONA NON GRATA. (YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER) 33
VIII. EL CARPINTERO. (CALIFORNIAN WOODPECKER) 46
IX. A RED-HEADED COUSIN. (RED-HEADED WOODPECKER) 55
X. A STUDY OF ACQUIRED HABITS 60
XI. THE WOODPECKER'S TOOLS: HIS BILL 68
XII. THE WOODPECKER'S TOOLS: HIS FOOT 77
XIII. THE WOODPECKER'S TOOLS: HIS TAIL 86
XIV. THE WOODPECKER'S TOOLS: HIS TONGUE 99
XV. HOW EACH WOODPECKER IS FITTED FOR HIS OWN
KIND OF LIFE 104
XVI. THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 110
APPENDIX 113
A. KEY TO THE WOODPECKERS OF NORTH AMERICA 114
B. DESCRIPTIONS OF THE WOODPECKERS OF
NORTH AMERICA 117
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Flicker (colored) _Frontispiece_
Boring Larva 10
Indian Spear 12
Solomon Islander's Spear 13
Downy Woodpecker (colored) _facing_ 28
Bark showing Work of Sapsucker 34
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (colored) _facing_ 34
Trunk of Tree showing Work of Californian Woodpecker 47
Californian Woodpecker (colored) _facing_ 48
Red-headed Woodpecker (colored) _facing_ 56
Head of the Lewis's Woodpecker 59
Head of Ivory-billed Woodpecker 70
Foot of Woodpecker 77
Diagram of Right Foot 79
Foot of Three-toed Woodpecker 80
Tail of Hairy Woodpecker 86
Tails of Brown Creeper and Chimney Swift 87
Middle Tail Feathers of Flicker, Ivory-billed
Woodpecker, and Hairy Woodpecker 89
Diagram of Curvature of Tails of Woodpeckers 90
Patterns of Tails 91
Under Side of Middle Tail Feather of
Ivory-billed Woodpecker 97
Tongue of Hairy Woodpecker 99
Tongue-bones of Flicker 100
Skull of Woodpecker, showing Bones of Tongue 101
Hyoids of Sapsucker and Golden-fronted Woodpecker 102
Diagram of Head of a Flicker 113
_The colored illustrations are by Louis Agassiz Fuertes.
The text cuts are from drawings by John L. Ridgway._
THE WOODPECKERS
FOREWORD: THE RIDDLERS
Long ago in Greece, the legend runs, a terrible monster called the
Sphinx used to waylay travelers to ask them riddles: whoever could not
answer these she killed, but the man who did answer them killed her and
made an end of her riddling.
To-day there is no Sphinx to fear, yet the world is full of unguessed
riddles. No thoughtful man can go far afield but some bird or flower or
stone bars his way with a question demanding an answer; and though many
men have been diligently spelling out the answers for many years, and we
for the most part must study the answers they have proved, and must
reply in their words, yet those shrewd old riddlers, the birds and
flowers and bees, are always ready for a new victim, putting their heads
together over some new enigma to bar the road to knowledge till that,
too, shall be answered; so that other men's learning does not always
suffice. So much of a man's pleasure in life, so much of his power,
depends on his ability to silence these persistent questioners, that
this little book was written with the hope of making clearer the kind of
questions Dame Nature asks, and the way to get correct answers.
This is purposely a _little_ book, dealing only with a single group of
birds, treating particularly only some of the commoner species of that
group, taking up only a few of the problems that present themselves to
the naturalist for solution, and aiming rather to make the reader
_acquainted with_ the birds than _learned about_ them.
The woodpeckers were selected in preference to any other family because
they are patient under observation, easily identified, resident in all
parts of the country both in summer and in winter, and because more than
any other birds they leave behind them records of their work which may
be studied after the birds have flown. The book provides ample means for
identifying every species and subspecies of woodpecker known in North
America, though only five of the commonest and most interesting species
have been selected for special study. At least three of these five
should be found in almost every part of the country. The Californian
woodpecker is never seen in the East, nor the red-headed in the far
West, but the downy and the hairy are resident nearly everywhere, and
some species of the flickers and sapsuckers, if not always the ones
chosen for special notice, are visitors in most localities.
Look for the woodpeckers in orchards and along the edges of thickets,
among tangles of wild grapes and in patches of low, wild berries, upon
which they often feed, among dead trees and in the track of forest
fires. Wherever there are boring larvæ, beetles, ants, grasshoppers, the
fruit of poison-ivy, dogwood, june-berry, wild cherry or wild grapes,
woodpeckers may be confidently looked for if there are any in the
neighborhood. Be patient, persistent, wide-awake, sure that you see what
you think you see, careful to remember what you have seen, studious to
compare your observations, and keen to hear the questions propounded
you. If you do this seven years and a day, you will earn the name of
Naturalist; and if you travel the road of the naturalist with curious
patience, you may some day become as famous a riddle-reader as was that
Oedipus, the king of Thebes, who slew the Sphinx.
I
HOW TO KNOW A WOODPECKER
The woodpecker is the easiest of all birds to recognize. Even if
entirely new to you, you may readily decide whether a bird is a
woodpecker or not.
The woodpecker is always striking and is often gay in color. He is
usually noisy, and his note is clear and characteristic. His shape and
habits are peculiar, so that whenever you see a bird clinging to the
side of a tree "as if he had been thrown at it and stuck," you may
safely call him a woodpecker. Not that all birds which cling to the bark
of trees are woodpeckers,--for the chickadees, the crested titmice, the
nuthatches, the brown creepers, and a few others like the kinglets and
some wrens and wood-warblers more or less habitually climb up and down
the tree-trunks; but these do it with a pretty grace wholly unlike the
woodpecker's awkward, cling-fast way of holding on. As the largest of
these is smaller than the smallest woodpecker, and as none of them
(excepting only the tiny kinglets) ever shows the patch of yellow or
scarlet which always marks the head of the male woodpecker, and which
sometimes adorns his mate, there is no danger of making mistakes.
The nuthatches are the only birds likely to be confused with
woodpeckers, and these have the peculiar habit of traveling down a
tree-trunk with their heads pointing to the ground. A woodpecker never
does this; he may move down the trunk of the tree he is working on, but
he will do it by hopping backward. A still surer sign of the woodpecker
is the way he sits upon his tail, using it to brace him. No other birds
except the chimney swift and the little brown creeper ever do this. A
sure mark, also, is his feet, which have two toes turned forward and two
turned backward. We find this arrangement in no other North American
birds except the cuckoos and our one native parroquet. However, there is
one small group of woodpeckers which have but three toes, and these are
the only North American land-birds that do not have four well-developed
toes.
In coloration the woodpeckers show a strong family likeness. Except in
some young birds, the color is always brilliant and often is gaudy.
Usually it shows much clear black and white, with dashes of scarlet or
yellow about the head. Sometimes the colors are "solid," as in the
red-headed woodpecker; sometimes they lie in close bars, as in the
red-bellied species; sometimes in spots and stripes, as in the downy and
hairy; but there is always a _contrast_, never any blending of hues. The
red or yellow is laid on in well-defined patches--square, oblong, or
crescentic--upon the crown, the nape, the jaws, or the throat; or else
in stripes or streaks down the sides of the head and neck, as in the
logcock, or pileated woodpecker.
There is no rule about the color markings of the sexes, as in some
families of birds. Usually the female lacks all the bright markings of
the male; sometimes, as in the logcock, she has them but in more
restricted areas; sometimes, as in the flickers, she has all but one of
the male's color patches; and in a few species, as the red-headed and
Lewis's woodpeckers, the two sexes are precisely alike in color. In the
black-breasted woodpecker, sometimes called Williamson's sapsucker, the
male and female are so totally different that they were long described
and named as different birds. It sometimes happens that a young female
will show the color marks of the male, but will retain them only the
first year.
Though the woodpeckers cling to the trunks of trees, they are not
exclusively climbing birds. Some kinds, like the flickers, are quite as
frequently found on the ground, wading in the grass like meadowlarks.
Often we may frighten them from the tangled vines of the frost grape and
the branches of wild cherry trees, or from clumps of poison-ivy, whither
they come to eat the fruit. The red-headed woodpecker is fond of sitting
on fence posts and telegraph poles; and both he and the flicker
frequently alight on the roofs of barns and houses and go pecking and
pattering over the shingles. The sapsuckers and several other kinds will
perch on dead limbs, like a flycatcher, on the watch for insects; the
flickers, and more rarely other kinds, will sit crosswise of a limb
instead of crouching lengthwise of it, as is the custom with
woodpeckers.
All these points you will soon learn. You will become familiar with the
form, the flight, and the calls of the different woodpeckers; you will
learn not only to know them by name, but to understand their characters;
they will become your acquaintances, and later on your friends.
This heavy bird, with straight, chisel bill and sharp-pointed
tail-feathers; with his short legs and wide, flapping wings, his
unmusical but not disagreeable voice, and his heavy, undulating,
business-like flight, is distinctly bourgeois, the type of a bird
devoted to business and enjoying it. No other bird has so much work to
do all the year round, and none performs his task with more energy and
sense. The woodpecker makes no aristocratic pretensions, puts on none of
the coy graces and affectations of the professional singer; even his gay
clothes fit him less jauntily than they would another bird. He is
artisan to the backbone,--a plain, hard-working, useful citizen,
spending his life in hammering holes in anything that appears to need a
hole in it. Yet he is neither morose nor unsocial. There is a vein of
humor in him, a large reserve of mirth and jollity. We see little of it
except in the spring, and then for a time all the laughter in him
bubbles up; he becomes uproarious in his glee, and the melody which he
cannot vent in song he works out in the channels of his trade, filling
the woodland with loud and harmonious rappings. Above all other birds he
is the friend of man, and deserves to have the freedom of the fields.
II
HOW THE WOODPECKER CATCHES A GRUB
Did you ever see a hairy woodpecker strolling about a tree for what he
could pick up?
There is a _whur-r-rp_ of gay black and white wings and the flash of a
scarlet topknot as, with a sharp cry, he dashes past you, strikes the
limb solidly with both feet, and instantly sidles behind it, from which
safe retreat he keeps a sharp black eye fixed upon your motions. If you
make friends with him by keeping quiet, he will presently forgive you
for being there and hop to your side of the limb, pursuing his ordinary
work in the usual way, turning his head from side to side, inspecting
every crevice, and picking up whatever looks appetizing. Any knot or
little seam in the bark is twice scanned; in such places moths and
beetles lay their eggs. Little cocoons are always dainty morsels, and
large cocoons contain a feast. The butterfly-hunter who is hoping to
hatch out some fine cecropia moths knows well that a large proportion of
all the cocoons he discovers will be empty. The hairy woodpecker has
been there before him, and has torn the chrysalis out of its silken
cradle. For this the farmer should thank him heartily, even if the
butterfly-hunter does not, for the cecropia caterpillar is destructive.
But sometimes, on the fair bark of a smooth limb, the woodpecker stops,
listens, taps, and begins to drill. He works with haste and energy,
laying open a deep hole. For what? An apple-tree borer was there cutting
out the life of the tree. The farmer could see no sign of him; neither
could the woodpecker, but he could hear the strong grub down in his
little chamber gnawing to make it longer, or, frightened by the heavy
footsteps on his roof, scrambling out of the way.
[Illustration: Boring larva.]
It is easy to hear the borer at work in the tree. When a pine forest has
been burned and the trees are dead but still standing, there will be
such a crunching and grinding of borers eating the dead wood that it can
be heard on all sides many yards away. Even a single borer can sometimes
be heard distinctly by putting the ear to the tree. Sound travels much
farther through solids than it does through air; notice how much farther
you can hear a railroad train by the click of the rails than by the
noise that comes on the air. Even our dull ears can detect the woodworm,
but we cannot locate him. How, then, is the woodpecker to do what we
cannot do?
Doubtless experience teaches him much, but one observer suggests that
the woodpecker places the grub by the sense of touch. He says he has
seen the red-headed woodpecker drop his wings till they trailed along
the branch, as if to determine where the vibrations in the wood were
strongest, and thus to decide where the grub was boring. But no one else
appears to have noticed that woodpeckers are in the habit of trailing
their wings as they drill for grubs. It would be a capital study for one
to attempt to discover whether the woodpecker locates his grub by
feeling, or whether he does it by hearing alone. Only one should be sure
he is looking for grubs and not for beetles' eggs, nor for ants, nor for
caterpillars. By the energy with which he drills, and the size of the
hole left after he has found his tidbit, one can decide whether he was
working for a borer.
But when the borer has been located, he has yet to be captured. There
are many kinds of borers. Some channel a groove just beneath the bark
and are easily taken; but others tunnel deep into the wood. I measured
such a hole the other day, and found it was more than eight inches long
and larger than a lead-pencil, bored through solid rock-maple wood. The
woodpecker must sink a hole at right angles to this channel and draw the
big grub out through his small, rough-sided hole. You would be
surprised, if you tried to do the same with a pair of nippers the size
of the woodpecker's bill, to find how strong the borer is, how he can
buckle and twist, how he braces himself against the walls of his house.
Were your strength no greater than the woodpecker's, the task would be
much harder. Indeed, a large grub would stand a good chance of getting
away but for one thing, the woodpecker _spears_ him, and thereby saves
many a dinner for himself.
[Illustration: Indian spear.]
Here is a primitive Indian fish-spear, such as the Penobscots used. To
the end of a long pole two wooden jaws are tied loosely enough to spring
apart a little under pressure, and midway between them, firmly driven
into the end of the pole, is a point of iron. When a fish was struck,
the jaws sprung apart under the force of the blow, guiding the iron
through the body of the fish, which was held securely in the hollow
above, that just fitted around his sides, and by the point itself.
[Illustration: Solomon Islander's spear.]
The tool with which the woodpecker fishes for a grub is very much the
same. His mandibles correspond to the two movable jaws. They are
knife-edged, and the lower fits exactly inside the upper, so that they
give a very firm grip. In addition, the upper one is movable. All birds
can move the upper mandible, because it is hinged to the skull. (Watch a
parrot some day, if you do not believe it.) A medium-sized woodpecker,
like the Lewis's, can elevate his upper mandible at least a quarter of
an inch without opening his mouth at all. This enables him to draw his
prey through a smaller hole than would be needed if he must open his
jaws along their whole length. Between the mandibles is the
sharp-pointed tongue, which can be thrust entirely through a grub,
holding him impaled. Unlike the Indian's spear-point, the woodpecker's
tongue is barbed heavily on both sides, and it is extensile. As a tool
it resembles the Solomon Islander's spear. A medium-sized woodpecker can
dart his tongue out two inches or more beyond the tip of his bill. A New
Bedford boy might tell us, and very correctly, that the woodpecker
_harpoons_ his grub, just as a whaleman harpoons a whale. If the grub
tries to back off into his burrow, out darts the long, barbed tongue and
spears him. Then it drags him along the crooked tunnel and into the
narrow shaft picked by the woodpecker, where the strong jaws seize and
hold him firmly.
III
HOW THE WOODPECKER COURTS HIS MATE
Other birds woo their mates with songs, but the woodpecker has no voice
for singing. He cannot pour out his soul in melody and tell his love his
devotion in music. How do songless birds express their emotions? Some by
grotesque actions and oglings, as the horned owl, and some by frantic
dances, as the sharp-tailed grouse, woo and win their mates; but the
amorous woodpecker, not excepting the flickers, which also woo by
gestures, whacks a piece of seasoned timber, and rattles off
interminable messages according to the signal code set down for
woodpeckers' love affairs. He is the only instrumental performer among
the birds; for the ruffed grouse, though he drums, has no drum.
There is no cheerier spring sound, in our belated Northern season, than
the quick, melodious rappings of the sapsucker from some dead ash limb
high above the meadow. It is the best performance of its kind: he knows
the capabilities of his instrument, and gets out of it all the music
there is in it. Most if not all woodpeckers drum occasionally, but
drumming is the special accomplishment of the sapsucker. He is easily
first. In Maine, where they are abundant, they make the woods in
springtime resound with their continual rapping. Early in April, before
the trees are green with leaf, or the pussy-willows have lost their
silky plumpness, when the early round-leafed yellow violet is cuddling
among the brown, dead leaves, I hear the yellow-bellied sapsucker along
the borders of the trout stream that winds down between the mountains.
The dead branch of an elm-tree is his favorite perch, and there,
elevated high above all the lower growth, he sits rolling forth a flood
of sound like the tremolo of a great organ. Now he plays
staccato,--detached, clear notes; and now, accelerating his time, he
dashes through a few bars of impetuous hammerings. The woods reëcho with
it; the mountains give it faintly back. Beneath him the ruffed grouse
paces back and forth on his favorite mossy log before he raises the
palpitating whirr of his drumming. A chickadee digging in a rotten limb
pauses to spit out a mouthful of punky wood and the brown _Vanessa_,
edged with yellow, first butterfly of the season, flutters by on
rustling wings. So spring arrives in Maine, ushered in by the reveille
of the sapsucker.
So ambitious is the sapsucker of the excellence of his performance that
no instrument but the best will satisfy him. He is always experimenting,
and will change his anvil for another as soon as he discovers one of
superior resonance. They say he tries the tin pails of the maple-sugar
makers to see if these will not give him a clearer note; that he drums
on tin roofs and waterspouts till he loosens the solder and they come
tumbling down. But usually he finds nothing so near his liking as a
hard-wood branch, dead and barkless, the drier, the harder, the thinner,
the finer grained, so much the better for his uses.
Deficient as they are in voice, the woodpeckers do not lack a musical
ear. Mr. Burroughs tells us that a downy woodpecker of his acquaintance
used to change his key by tapping on a knot an inch or two from his
usual drumming place, thereby obtaining a higher note. Alternating
between the two places, he gave to his music the charm of greater
variety. The woodpeckers very quickly discover the superior conductivity
of metals. In parts of the country where woodpeckers are more abundant
than good drumming trees, a tin roof proves an almost irresistible
attraction. A lightning-rod will sometimes draw them farther than it
would an electric bolt; and a telegraph pole, with its tinkling glasses
and ringing wires, gives them great satisfaction. If men did not put
their singing poles in such public places, their music would be much
more popular with the woodpeckers; but even now the birds often venture
on the dangerous pastime and hammer you out a concord of sweet sounds
from the mellow wood-notes, the clear peal of the glass, and the ringing
overtones of the wires.
The flicker often telegraphs his love by tapping either on a forest tree
or on some loose board of a barn or outhouse; but he has other ways of
courting his lady. On fine spring mornings, late in April, I have seen
them on a horizontal bough, the lady sitting quietly while her lover
tried to win her approval by strange antics. Quite often there are two
males displaying their charms in open rivalry, but once I saw them when
the field was clear. If fine clothes made a gentleman, this brave wooer
would have been first in all the land: for his golden wings and tail
showed their glittering under side as he spread them; his scarlet
headdress glowed like fire; his rump was radiantly white, not to speak
of the jetty black of his other ornaments and the beautiful
ground-colors of his body. He danced before his lady, showing her all
these beauties, and perhaps boasting a little of his own good looks,
though she was no less beautiful. He spread his wings and tail for her
inspection; he bowed, to show his red crescent; he bridled, he stepped
forward and back and sidewise with deep bows to his mistress, coaxing
her with the mellowest and most enticing _co-wee-tucks_, which no doubt
in his language meant "Oh, promise me," laughing now and then his jovial
_wick-a-wick-a-wick-a-wick-a_, either in glee or nervousness. It was all
so very silly--and so very nice! I wonder how it all came out. Did she
promise him? Or did she find a gayer suitor?
IV
HOW THE WOODPECKER MAKES A HOUSE
All woodpeckers make their houses in the wood of trees, either the trunk
or one of the branches. Almost the only exceptions to this rule are
those that live in the treeless countries of the West. In the torrid
deserts of Arizona and the Southwest, some species are obliged to build
in the thorny branches of giant cacti, which there grow to an enormous
size. In the treeless plains to the northward, a few individuals, for
lack of anything so suitable as the cactus, dig holes in clay banks, or
even lay their eggs upon the surface of the prairie. In a country where
chimney swallows nest in deserted houses, and sand martins burrow in the
sides of wells, who wonders at the flicker's thinking that the side of a
haystack, the hollow of a wheel-hub, or the cavity under an old
ploughshare, is an ideal home? But in wooded countries the woodpeckers
habitually nest in trees. The only exceptions I know are a few flickers'
holes in old posts, and a few instances where flickers have pecked
through the weatherboarding of a house to nest in the space between the
walls.
But because a bird nests in a hole in a tree, it is not necessarily a
woodpecker. The sparrow-hawk, the house sparrow, the tree swallow, the
bluebird, most species of wrens, and several of the smaller species of
owls nest either in natural cavities in trees or in deserted
woodpeckers' holes. The chickadees, the crested titmice, and the
nuthatches dig their own holes after the same pattern as the
woodpecker's. However, the large, round holes were all made by
woodpeckers, and of those under two inches in diameter, our friend Downy
made his full share. It is easy to tell who made the hole, for the
different birds have different styles of housekeeping. The chickadees
and nuthatches always build a soft little nest of grass, leaves, and
feathers, while the woodpeckers lay their eggs on a bed of chips, and
carry nothing in from outside.
Soon after they have mated in the spring, the woodpeckers begin to talk
of housekeeping. First, a tree must be chosen. It may be sound or partly
decayed, one of a clump or solitary; but it is usually dead or
hollow-hearted, and at least partly surrounded by other trees. Sometimes
a limb is chosen, sometimes an upright trunk, and the nest may be from
two feet to one hundred feet from the ground, though most frequently it
will be found not less than ten nor more than thirty feet up. However
odd the location finally occupied, it is likely that it was not the
first one selected. A woodpecker will dig half a dozen houses rather
than occupy an undesirable tenement. It is very common to find their
unfinished holes and the wider-mouthed, shallower pockets which they dig
for winter quarters; for those that spend their winters in the cold
North make a hole to live in nights and cold and stormy days.
The first step in building is to strike out a circle in the bark as
large as the doorway is to be; that is, from an inch and a half to three
or four inches in diameter according to the size of the woodpecker. It
is nearly always a perfect circle. Try, if you please, to draw freehand
a circle of dots as accurate as that which the woodpecker strikes out
hurriedly with his bill, and see whether it is easy to do as well as he
does.
If the size and shape of the doorway suit him, the woodpecker scales off
the bark inside his circle of holes and begins his hard work. He seems
to take off his coat and work in his shirtsleeves, so vigorously does he
labor as he clings with his stout toes, braced in position by his
pointed tail. The chips fly out past him, or if they lie in the hole,
he sweeps them out with his bill and pelts again at the same place. The
pair take turns at the work. Who knows how long they work before
resting? Do they take turns of equal length? Does one work more than the
other? A pair of flickers will dig about two inches in a day, the hole
being nearly two and a half inches in diameter. A week or more is
consumed in digging the nest, which, among the flickers, is commonly
from ten to eighteen inches deep. The hole usually runs in horizontally
for a few inches and then curves down, ending in a chamber large enough
to make a comfortable nest for the mother and her babies.
What a good time the little ones have in their hole! Rain and frost
cannot chill them; no enemy but the red squirrel is likely to disturb
them. There they lie in their warm, dark chamber, looking up at the ray
of light that comes in the doorway, until at last they hear the
scratching of their mother's feet as she alights on the outside of the
tree and clambers up to feed them. What a piping and calling they raise
inside the hole, and how they all scramble up the walls of their chamber
and thrust out their beaks to be fed, till the old tree looks as if it
were blossoming with little woodpeckers' hungry mouths!
V
HOW A FLICKER FEEDS HER YOUNG[1]
[Footnote 1: Based upon the observations of Mr. William Brewster.]
As the house of the woodpecker has no windows and the old bird very
nearly fills the doorway when she comes home, it is hard to find out
just how she feeds her little ones. But one of our best naturalists has
had the opportunity to observe it, and has told what he saw.
A flicker had built a nest in the trunk of a rather small dead tree
which, after the eggs were hatched, was accidentally broken off just at
the entrance hole. This left the whole cavity exposed to the weather;
but it was too late to desert the nest, and impossible to remove the
young birds to another nest.
When first visited, the five little birds were blind, naked, and
helpless. They were motherless, too. Some one must have killed their
pretty mother; for she never came to feed them, and the father was
taking all the care of his little family. When disturbed the little
birds hissed like snakes, as is the habit of the callow young of
woodpeckers, chickadees, and other birds nesting habitually in holes in
trees. When they were older and their eyes were open, they made a
clatter much like the noise of a mowing-machine, and loud enough to be
heard thirty yards away.
The father came at intervals of from twenty to sixty minutes to feed the
little ones. He was very shy, and came so quietly that he would be first
seen when he alighted close by with a low little laugh or a subdued but
anxious call to the young. "Here I am again!" he laughed; or "Are you
all right, children?" he called to them. "All right!" they would answer,
clattering in concert like a two-horse mower.
As soon as they heard him scratching on the tree-trunk, up they would
all clamber to the edge of the nest and hold out their gaping mouths to
be fed. Each one was anxious to be fed first, because there never was
enough to go round. There was always one that, like the little pig of
the nursery tale, "got none." When he came to the nest, the father would
look around a moment, trying to choose the one he wanted to feed first.
Did he always pick out the poor little one that had none the time
before, I wonder?
After the old bird had made his choice, he would bend over the little
bird and drive his long bill down the youngster's throat as if to run
it through him. Then the little bird would catch hold as tightly as he
could and hang on while his father jerked him up and down for a second
or a second and a half with great rapidity. What was he doing? He was
pumping food from his own stomach into the little one's. Many birds feed
their young in this way. They do not hold the food in their own mouths,
but swallow and perhaps partially digest it, so that it shall be fit for
the tender little stomachs.
While the woodpecker was pumping in this manner his motions were much
the same as when he drummed, but his tail twitched as rapidly as his
head and his wings quivered. The motion seemed to shake his whole body.
In two weeks from the time when the little birds were blind, naked,
helpless nestlings they became fully feathered and full grown, able to
climb up to the top of the nest, from which they looked out with
curiosity and interest. At any noise they would slip silently back. A
day or two later they left the old nest and began their journeys.
No naturalist has been able to tell us whether other woodpeckers than
the golden-winged flicker feed their young in this way; and little is
known of the number of kinds of birds that use this method, but it is
suspected that it is far more common than has ever been determined. If
an old bird is seen to put her bill down a young one's throat and keep
it there even so short a time as a second, it is probable that she is
feeding the little one by regurgitation, that is, by pumping up food
from her own stomach. Any bird seen doing this should be carefully
watched. It has long been known that the domestic pigeon does this, and
the same has been observed a number of times of the ruby-throated
hummingbird. A California lady has taken some remarkable photographs of
the Anna's hummingbird in the act, showing just how it is done.
VI
FRIEND DOWNY
No better little bird comes to our orchards than our friend the downy
woodpecker. He is the smallest and one of the most sociable of our
woodpeckers,--a little, spotted, black-and-white fellow, precisely like
his larger cousin the hairy, except in having the outer tail-feathers
barred instead of plain. Nearly everything that can be said of one is
equally true of the other on a smaller scale. They look alike, they act
alike, and their nests and eggs are alike in everything but size.
Downy is the most industrious of birds. He is seldom idle and never in
mischief. As he does not fear men, but likes to live in orchards and in
the neighborhood of fields, he is a good friend to us. On the farm he
installs himself as Inspector of Apple-trees. It is an old and an
honorable profession among birds. The pay is small, consisting only of
what can be picked up, but, as cultivated trees are so infested with
insects that food is always plentiful, and as they have usually a
dead branch suitable to nest in, Downy asks no more. Summer and winter
he works on our orchards. At sunrise he begins, and he patrols the
branches till sunset. He taps on the trunks to see whether he can hear
any rascally borers inside. He inspects every tree carefully in a
thorough and systematic way, beginning low down and following up with a
peek into every crevice and a tap upon every spot that looks suspicious.
If he sees anything which ought not to be there, he removes it at once.
[Illustration]
A moth had laid her eggs in a crack in the bark, expecting to hatch out
a fine brood of caterpillars: but Downy ate them all, thus saving a
whole branch from being overrun with caterpillars and left fruitless,
leafless, and dying. A beetle had just deposited her eggs here. Downy
saw her, and took not only the eggs but the beetle herself. Those eggs
would have hatched into boring larvæ, which would have girdled and
killed some of the branches, or have burrowed under the bark, causing it
to fall off, or have bored into the wood and, perhaps, have killed the
tree. Nor is the full-grown borer exempt. Downy hears him, pecks a few
strokes, and harpoons him with unerring aim. When Downy has made an
arrest in this way, the prisoner does not escape from the police. Here
is a colony of ants, running up the tree in one line and down in
another, touching each other with their feelers as they pass. A feast
for our friend! He takes both columns, and leaves none to tell the tale.
This is a good deed, too, since ants are of no benefit to fruit-trees
and are very fond of the dead-ripe fruit.
And Downy is never too busy to listen for borers. They are fine plump
morsels much to his taste, not so sour as ants, nor so hard-shelled as
beetles, nor so insipid as insects' eggs. A good borer is his preferred
dainty. The work he does in catching borers is of incalculable benefit,
for no other bird can take his place. The warblers, the vireos, and some
other birds in summer, the chickadees and nuthatches all the year round,
are helping to eat up the eggs and insects that lie near the surface,
but the only birds equipped for digging deep under the bark and dragging
forth the refractory grubs are the woodpeckers.
So Downy works at his self-appointed task in our orchards summer and
winter, as regular as a policeman on his beat. But he is much more than
a policeman, for he acts as judge, jury, jailer, and jail. All the
evidence he asks against any insect is to find him loafing about the
premises. "I swallow him first and find out afterwards whether he was
guilty," says Downy with a wink and a nod.
Most birds do not stay all the year, in the North, at least, and most,
in return for their labors in the spring, demand some portion of the
fruit or grain of midsummer and autumn. Not so Downy. His services are
entirely gratuitous; he works twice as long as most others. He spends
the year with us, no winter ever too severe for him, no summer too hot;
and he never taxes the orchard, nor takes tribute from the berry patch.
Only a quarter of his food is vegetable, the rest being made up of
injurious insects; and the vegetable portion consists entirely of wild
fruits and weed-seeds, nothing that man eats or uses. Downy feeds on the
wild dogwood berries, a few pokeberries, the fruit of the woodbine, and
the seeds of the poison-ivy,--whatever scanty and rather inferior fare
is to be had at Nature's fall and winter table. If in the cold winter
weather we will take pains to hang out a bone with some meat on it, raw
or cooked, or a piece of suet, taking care that it is not salted,--for
few wild birds except the crossbills can eat salted food,--we may see
how he appreciates our thoughtfulness. Shall we grudge him a bone from
our own abundance, or neglect to fasten it firmly out of reach of the
cat and dog? If his cousin the hairy and his neighbor the chickadee
come and eat with him, bid them a hearty welcome. The feast is spread
for all the birds that help men, and friend Downy shall be their host.
VII
PERSONA NON GRATA
We shall not attempt to deny that Downy has an unprincipled relative.
While it is no discredit, it is a great misfortune to Downy, who is
often murdered merely because he looks a little, a very little, like
this disreputable cousin of his. The real offender is the sapsucker,
that musical genius of whom we have already spoken.
The popular belief is that every woodpecker is a sapsucker, and that
every hole he digs in a tree is an injury to the tree. We have seen that
every hole Downy digs is a benefit, and now we wish to learn why it is
that the sapsucker's work is any more injurious than other woodpeckers'
holes; how we are to recognize the sapsucker's work; and how much damage
he does. We will do what the scientists often do,--examine the bird's
work and make it tell us the story. There is no danger of hurting the
sapsucker's reputation. The farmer could have no worse opinion of him;
and, though the case has been appealed to the higher courts of science
more than once, where the sapsucker's cause has been eloquently and
ably defended, the verdict has gone against him. Scientists now do not
deny that the sapsucker does harm. But his worst injury is less in the
damage he does to the trees than in the ill-will and suspicion he
creates against woodpeckers which do no harm at all. If you will study
the picture and the descriptions in the Key to the Woodpeckers, you will
be able to recognize the sapsucker and his nearest relatives, whether in
the East or in the West. But all sapsuckers may be known by their pale
yellowish under parts, and by the work they leave behind. As the
yellow-bellied sapsucker is the only one found east of the Rocky
Mountains, we shall speak only of him and his work.
[Illustration: Work of Sapsucker.]
Here is a specimen of the yellow-bellied sapsucker's work which I picked
up under the tree from which it had fallen. We do not need to inquire
whether the tree was injured by its falling, for we know that the loss
of sound and healthy bark is always a damage. Was this sound bark? Yes,
because it is still firm and new. The sap in it dried quickly,
showing that neither disease nor worms caused it to fall; it is clean
and hard on the back, showing that it came from a live tree, not from a
dead, rotting log.
[Illustration]
How do I know that a bird caused it to fall? The marks are precisely
such as are always left by a woodpecker's bill. How do I know that it
was a sapsucker's work? Because no other woodpecker has the habit which
characterizes the sapsucker, of sinking holes in straight lines. The
sapsuckers drill lines of holes sometimes around and sometimes up and
down the tree-trunk, but almost always in rings or belts about the trunk
or branches. A girdle may be but a single line of holes, or it may
consist of four or five, or more, lines. Sometimes a band will be two
feet wide; and as many as eight hundred holes have been counted on the
trunk of a single tree. Such extensive peckings, however, are to be
expected only on large forest trees. Most fruit and ornamental trees are
girdled a few times about the trunk, and about the principal branches
just below the nodes, or forks.
Why did the bird dig these holes? There are three things that he might
have obtained,--sap, the inner bark, and boring larvæ. Some naturalists
have suggested a fourth as possible,--the insects that would be
attracted by the sap.
We will see what the piece of bark tells us. It is four and a half
inches long, by an inch and a half wide, and its area of six and three
fourths square inches has forty-four punctures. Does this look as if the
bird were digging grubs? Do borers live in such straight little streets?
The number and arrangement of the holes show that he was not seeking
borers, while the naturalists tell us that he never eats a borer unless
by accident. What did he get? Undoubtedly he pecked away some of the
inner bark. All these holes are much larger on the back side of the
specimen than on the outer surface. While the damp inner bark would
shrink a little on exposure to the air, we know that it could not shrink
as much as this; and investigation has shown that the sapsucker feeds
largely on just such food, for it has been found in his stomach. Two
other possible food-substances remain,--sap and insects. We know that
the sapsucker eats many insects, but it is impossible to prove that he
intended these holes for insect lures. Sap he might have gotten from
them, if he wished it. We know that the white birch is full of excellent
sap, from which can be made a birch candy, somewhat bitter, but nearly
as good as horehound candy. The rock and red maples and the white canoe
birch are the only trees in our Northern forests from which we make
candy. A strong probability that our bird wanted sap is indicated by the
arrangement of the holes. Usually he drills his holes in rings around
the tree-trunk, but in this instance his longest lines of holes are
vertical. If our sapsucker was drilling for sap, he arranged his holes
so that it would almost run into his mouth, lazy bird!
Our piece of bark has taught us:--
That the sapsucker injured this tree.
That he was not after grubs.
That he got, and undoubtedly ate, the soft inner bark of the tree.
That he got, and may have drunk, the sap.
We could not infer any more from a single instance, but the naturalists
assure us that the bird is in the habit of injuring trees, that he never
eats grubs intentionally, and that he eats too much bark for it to be
regarded as taken accidentally with other food. About the sap they
cannot be so sure, as it digests very quickly. There remain two points
to prove: whether the sapsucker drills his holes for the sake of the
sap, or for insects attracted by the sap, provided that he eats anything
but the inner bark.
Our little specimen can tell us no more, but two mountain ash trees
which were intimate acquaintances of mine from childhood can go on with
the story. Do not be surprised that I speak of them as friends; the
naturalist who does not make _friends_ of the creatures and plants about
will hear few stories from them. These trees would not tell this tale to
any one but an intimate acquaintance. Let us hear what they have to say
about the sapsucker.
There are in the garden of my old home two mountain ash trees,
thirty-six years of age, each having grown from a sprout that sprang up
beside an older tree cut down in 1863. They stand not more than two rods
apart; have the same soil, the same amount of sun and rain, the same
exposure to wind, and equal care. During all the years of my childhood
one was a perfectly healthy tree, full of fruit in its season, while the
other bore only scanty crops, and was always troubled with cracked and
scaling bark. To-day the unhealthy tree is more vigorous than ever
before, while its formerly stalwart brother stands a mere wreck of its
former life and beauty. What should be the cause of such a remarkable
change when all conditions of growth have remained the same?
I admit that there is some internal difference in the trees, for all the
birds tell me of it. One has always borne larger and more abundant fruit
than the other, but this is no reason why the birds should strip all
the berries from that tree before eating any from the other. When we
know that the favorite tree stands directly in front of the windows of a
much-used room and overhangs a frequented garden path, the preference
becomes more marked. But robins, grosbeaks, purple finches, and the
whole berry-eating tribe agree to choose one and neglect the other, and
even the spring migrants will leave the gay red tassels of fruit still
swinging on one tree, to scratch over the leaves and eat the fallen
berries that lie beneath the other. My own taste is not keen in choosing
between bitter berries, but the birds all agree that there is a decided
difference in these trees,--did agree, I should say, for their favorite
is the tree that is dying. Evidently this is a question of taste. It is
interesting to observe that the sapsucker, which was never seen to touch
the fruit of the trees, agrees with the fruit-eating birds. Nearly all
his punctures were in the tree now dying. Is there a difference in the
taste of the sap? Does the taste of the sap affect the taste of the
fruit? Or is it merely a question of quantity? If he comes for sap, he
prefers one tree to the other on the score either of better quality or
greater quantity.
We will discuss later whether it is sap that he wishes: all that now
concerns us is to note that the internal difference, whatever it is, is
in favor of the tree that is dying; while the only external difference
appears to be the marks left by the sapsucker. While one tree is
sparingly marked by him, the other is tattooed with his punctures,
placed in single rings and in belts around trunk and branches beneath
every fork. It is a law of reasoning that, when every condition but one
is the same and the effects are different, the one exceptional condition
is the _cause_ of the difference. If these trees are alike in everything
except the work of the sapsucker (the only internal difference
apparently _offsetting_ his work in part), what inference do we draw as
to the effect of his work?
We presume that he is killing the tree, without as yet knowing how he
does it. What is his object? Good observers have stated that he draws a
little sap in order to attract flies and wasps; that the sap is not
drawn for its own sake, but as a bait for insects. Is this theory true?
The first objection is that it is improbable. The sapsucker is a
retiring, woodland bird that would hesitate to come into a town garden a
mile away from the nearest woods unless to get something he could not
find in the woods. Had he wanted insects, he would have tapped a tree
in the woods, or else he would have caught them in his usual flycatching
fashion. There must have been something about the mountain ash tree that
he craved. As it is a very rare tree in the vicinity of my home, the
sapsucker's only chance to satisfy his longing was by coming to some
town garden like our own.
Not only is the theory improbable, but it fails to explain the
sapsucker's actions in this instance. In twenty years he was never seen
to catch an insect that was attracted by the sap he drew. This does not
deny that he may have caught insects now and then, but it does deny that
he set the sap running for a lure. As he was never far away, and was
sometimes only four and a half feet by measure from a chamber window,
all that he did could be seen. He did not catch insects at his holes. He
drank sap and ate bark.
Finally, the theory is not only improbable and inadequate, but in this
instance it is impossible. I do not remember seeing a sapsucker in the
tree in the spring; if he came in the summer, it must have been at rare
intervals; but he was always there in the fall, when the leaves were
dropping. At that season the insect hordes had been dispersed by the
autumnal frosts, so that we know he did not come for insects.
In the many years during which I watched the sapsuckers--for there were
undoubtedly a number of different birds that came, although never more
than one at a time--there was such a curious similarity in their actions
that it is entirely proper to speak as if the same bird returned year
after year. His visits, as I have said, were usually made at the same
season. He would come silently and early, with the evident intention of
making this an all-day excursion. By eight o'clock he would be seen
clinging to a branch and curiously observant of the dining-room window,
which at that hour probably excited both his interest and his alarm.
Early in the day he showed considerable activity, flitting from limb to
limb and sinking a few holes, three or four in a row, usually _above_
the previous upper girdle of the limbs he selected to work upon. After
he had tapped several limbs he would sit waiting patiently for the sap
to flow, lapping it up quickly when the drop was large enough. At first
he would be nervous, taking alarm at noises and wheeling away on his
broad wings till his fright was over, when he would steal quietly back
to his sap-holes. When not alarmed, his only movement was from one row
of holes to another, and he tended them with considerable regularity. As
the day wore on he became less excitable, and clung cloddishly to his
tree-trunk with ever increasing torpidity, until finally he hung
motionless as if intoxicated, tippling in sap, a disheveled, smutty,
silent bird, stupefied with drink, with none of that brilliancy of
plumage and light-hearted gayety which made him the noisiest and most
conspicuous bird of our April woods.
Our mountain ash trees have told us several facts about the sapsucker:--
That he did not come to eat insects.
That he did come to drink sap, and that he probably ate the inner bark
also.
That he drank the sap because he liked it, not for some secondary
object, as insects.
That he could detect difference in the quality or quantity of the sap,
which caused him to prefer a particular tree.
That this difference apparently was in the taste of the sap, and that
the effects of a day's drinking of mountain ash sap seemed to indicate
some intoxicant or narcotic quality in the sap of that particular tree.
That the effect of his work upon the tree was apparently injurious, as
it is the only cause assigned of a healthy tree's dying before a less
healthy one of the same age and species, subject all its life to the
same conditions.
So much we have learned about this sapsucker's habits, and now we should
like to know why his work is harmful, and why that of the other
woodpeckers is not. It is not because he drinks the sap. All the sap he
could eat or waste would not harm the tree, if allowed to run out of a
few holes. Think how many gallons the sugar-makers drain out of a single
tree without killing the tree. But the sugar-maker takes the sap in the
spring, when the crude sap is mounting up in the tree, while the
sapsucker does not begin his work till midsummer or autumn, when the
tree is sending down its elaborated sap to feed the trunk and make it
grow. This accounts for the woodpecker's digging his pits _above_ the
lines of the holes already in the tree. The loss of this elaborated sap
is a greater injury than the waste of a far larger quantity of crude
sap, so that on the season of the year when the sapsucker digs his holes
depends in large measure the amount of damage he does. The injury that
he does to the wood itself is trivial. He is not a wood_pecker_ except
at time of nesting, and most woodpeckers prefer to build in a dead or
dying branch, where their work does no hurt. But we know very well that
a tree may be a wreck, riven from top to bottom by lightning, split open
to the heart by the tempest, entirely hollow the whole length of its
trunk, and yet may flourish and bear fruit. The tree lives in its outer
layers. It may be crippled in almost any way, if the bark is left
uninjured; but if an inch of bark is cut out entirely around the tree,
it will die, for the sap can no longer run up and down to nourish it.
This is the sapsucker's crime: he girdles the tree,--not at his first
coming, nor yet at his second, not with one row of holes, nor yet with
two; but finally, after years perhaps, when row after row of punctures,
each checking a little the flow of sap, have overlapped and offset each
other and narrowed the channels through which it could mount and
descend, until the flow is stopped. Then the tree dies. It is not the
holes he makes, nor the sap he draws, but the way he places his holes
that makes the sapsucker an unwelcome visitor. For an unacceptable
individual he is to the farmer,--_persona non grata_, as kings say of
ambassadors who do not please their majesties. What shall we do with
him, the only black sheep in all the woodpecker flock? Let him alone,
unless we are positively sure that we know him from every other kind of
woodpecker. The damage he does is trifling compared with what we should
do if we made war upon other woodpeckers for some supposed wrong-doing
of the sapsucker.
VIII
EL CARPINTERO
In California and along the southwestern boundary of the United States
lives a woodpecker known among the Mexicans as El Carpintero, the
Carpenter.
Carpentering is both his profession and his pastime, and he seems really
to enjoy the work. When there is nothing more pressing to be done, he
spends his time tinkering around, fitting acorns into holes in such
great numbers and in so workmanlike a fashion that we do not know which
is more remarkable, his patience or his skill. Every acorn is fitted
into a separate hole made purposely for it, every one is placed butt end
out and is driven in flush with the surface, so that a much frequented
tree often appears as if studded with ornamental nails. "What an
industrious bird!" we exclaim; but still it takes some time to
appreciate how enormous is the labor of the Carpenter. Whole trees will
sometimes be covered with his work, until a single tree has thousands of
acorns bedded into its bark so neatly and tightly that no other
creature can remove them.
[Illustration: Work of Californian Woodpecker.]
We may take for examination, from specimens of the Carpenter's work, a
piece of spruce bark seven inches long by six wide, containing ten
acorns and two empty holes. As spruce bark is so much harder and rougher
than the pine bark in which he usually stores his nuts,[1] this
specimen looks rough and unfinished, and even shows some acorns driven
in sidewise; but for another reason I have preferred it to
better-looking examples of his work for study. As we shall see later, it
gives us a definite bit of information about the bird.
[Footnote 1: They often use white-oak bark, fence-posts, telegraph
poles, even the stalks of century-plants, when trees are not convenient.
(Merriam, _Auk_, viii. 117.)]
Think of the work of digging these twelve holes. Think of the labor of
carrying these ten large acorns and driving them in so tightly that
after years of shrinking they cannot be removed by a knife without
injuring either the acorn or the bark. Yet how small a part of the
woodpecker's year's work is here! How long could he live on ten acorns?
How many must he gather for his winter's needs? How many must he lose by
forgetting to come back to them? We cannot calculate the work a single
bird does nor the nuts he eats, for several birds usually work in
company and may use the same tree; but all the woodpeckers are large
eaters, and the Californian has been singled out for special mention.
Can we estimate the amount of work required to lay up one day's food?
Judging by the amount of nuts some other birds will eat, I should
think that all ten acorns contained in this piece of bark could be eaten
in one day without surfeit. The estimate seems to me well inside of his
probable appetite. I have experimented on this piece of bark, using a
woodpecker's bill for a tool, and it takes me twenty minutes to dig a
hole as large but not as neat as these. Doubtless it would not take the
woodpecker as long; but at my rate of working, four hours were spent in
digging these twelve holes. Then each acorn had to be hunted up and
brought to the hole prepared for it. This entailed a journey, it may
have been only from one tree to another, or it may have been, and very
likely was, a considerable flight. For these acorns grew on oak-trees,
and we find them driven into the bark of pines and spruces.
[Illustration]
This it is which gives our specimen its particular interest. While oaks
and pines may be intermingled, though they naturally prefer different
soils and situations, and in the Rocky Mountains the pine-belt lies
above the oak region, spruce and oak trees do not grow in the same soil.
The spruce-belt stands higher up than the pine. As these nuts are stored
in the bark of a spruce-tree, we have clear evidence that the bird must
have carried them some distance. For every nut he made the whole
journey back and forth, since he could carry but one at a time,--ten
long trips back and forth, certainly consuming several minutes each.
Then each acorn had to be fitted to its hole. We have already spoken of
the accuracy with which this is done, so that the Carpenter's work is a
standing taunt to the hungry jays and squirrels which would gladly eat
his nuts if they could get them. A careful observer tells us that when
the hole is too small, the woodpecker takes the acorn out and makes the
hole a little larger, working so cautiously, however, that he sometimes
makes several trials before the acorn can be fitted and driven in flush
with the bark. Some of these acorns show cracks down the sides, as if
they had been split either in forcibly pulling them out of a hole not
deep enough for them, or in driving them when green and soft into a hole
too small for them. Of course after each trial the acorn must be hunted
up where it lies on the ground and driven in again, and this takes
considerable time.
As nearly as we can estimate it, not less than half a day must have been
spent in putting these acorns where we find them. With smaller acorns,
stored in pine bark, less time would have been required; but weeks, if
not months, of work are spent in laying up the winter's stores.
How the woodpecker's back and jaws must have ached! Surely he is human
enough to get tired with his work, and it is not play to do what this
bird has done. Some of the acorns measure seven tenths of an inch in
diameter by nine tenths in length, and the bird that carried them is
smaller than a robin. How he must have hurried to reach his tree when
the acorn was extra large! Yet he took time to drive every one in point
foremost. Even those that lie upon their sides must have been forced
into position by tapping the butt. He knows very well which end of an
acorn is which, does our Carpenter.
But what is the use of all this work? Why, if he wants acorns, does he
not eat them as they lie scattered under the oaks, instead of taking
pains to carry them away and put them into holes for the fun of eating
them out of the holes afterward? The absurdity of this has led some
people to surmise that the Carpenter chooses none but weevilly acorns,
and stores them that the grub inside may grow large and fat and
delicious. This would be very interesting, if it were true. There must
of course be more weevilly acorns on the ground than he picks up, so
that he could get as many grubs without taking all this trouble, and
there is no reason why they should not be as large and good as those
hatched out in holes in trees. When I wish to keep nuts sweet, I spread
them out on the attic floor in the sun and air, keeping them where they
will not touch each other. The Carpenter does practically the same
thing. Is it probable that he tries to raise a fine crop of grubs in
this way? If so, one or the other of us is doing just the wrong thing.
But if weevils are what the Carpenter wants, then the nuts in the bark
should be wormy; yet only two of them show any sign of a weevil, and of
these one appears from its dull color and weather-beaten look to be a
nut deposited several years before the others by some other woodpecker.
Every other acorn is as hard, shining, and bright colored as when it
fell from the tree. Evidently the bird picked these nuts up while they
were fresh and good; perhaps he chose them _because_ they were good and
fresh. The possibility becomes almost a certainty when we observe that
naturalists agree that the Carpenter uses no acorns but the
sweet-tasting species. Now there are likely to be as many grubs in one
kind of an acorn as in another, and he would scarcely refuse any kind
that contained them, if grubs were what he wanted. The fact that he
takes sweet acorns, and those only, shows that it is the meat of the nut
that he wants. And all good naturalists agree that it is the kernel
itself that he eats.
Why he stores them is not hard to decide when we remember that the
Californian woodpecker, over a large part of his range, is a mountain
bird. Though we think of California as the land of sunshine, it is not
universal summer there. The mountain ranges have a winter as severe as
that of New England, with a heavy snowfall. When the snow lies several
feet deep among the pines and spruces of the uplands, the Carpenter is
not distressed for food: his pantry is always above the level of the
snow; he need neither scratch a meagre living from the edges of the
snow-banks, nor go fasting. His fall's work has provided him not only
with the necessities, but with the luxuries of life.
But why does he spend so much time in making holes? He might tuck his
nuts into some natural crevice in the oak bark, or drop them into
cavities which all birds know so well where to find. And leave them
where any pilfering jay would be able to pick them out at his ease? Or
put them in the track of every wandering squirrel? Jays and squirrels
are never too honest to refuse to steal, but they find it harder to get
the woodpecker's stores out of his pine-tree pantry than to pick up
honest acorns of their own. So, like the woodpecker, they lay up their
own stores of nuts, and feed on them in winter, or go hungry.
We have had very little aid from anything except the piece of bark we
were studying, yet we have learned that the Californian woodpecker is a
good carpenter; that he works hard at his trade; that he shows
remarkable foresight in collecting his food, much ingenuity in housing
it, good judgment in putting it where his enemies cannot get it, and
wisdom in the plan he has adopted to give him a good supply of fresh
nuts at a season when the autumn's crop is buried under the deep snow.
If I were a Californian boy, I think I should spend my time in trying to
find out more about this wise woodpecker, concerning which much remains
to be discovered.
IX
A RED-HEADED COUSIN
Besides his half-brothers, the narrow-fronted and ant-eating
woodpeckers, the Carpenter has a numerous family of cousins,--the
red-headed, the red-bellied, the golden-fronted, the Gila,[1] and the
Lewis's woodpeckers. These all belong to one genus, and are much alike
in structure, though totally different in color. Most of them are
Western or Southwestern birds, but one is found in nearly all parts of
the United States lying between the Hudson River and the Rocky
Mountains, and is the most abundant woodpecker of the middle West. This
well-known cousin is the red-headed woodpecker, the tricolored beauty
that sits on fence-posts and telegraph poles, and sallies out, a blaze
of white, steel-blue, and scarlet, a gorgeous spectacle, whenever an
insect flits by. He is the one that raps so merrily on your tin roofs
when he feels musical.
[Footnote 1: So named from being found along the Gila River.]
In many ways the red-head, as he is familiarly called, is like his
carpenter cousin. Both indulge in long-continued drumming; both catch
flies expertly on the wing; and both have the curious habit of laying up
stores of food for future use. The Californian woodpecker not only
stores acorns, but insect food as well. But though the Carpenter's
habits have long been known, it is a comparatively short time since the
red-head was first detected laying up winter supplies.
The first to report this habit of the red-head was a gentleman in South
Dakota, who one spring noticed that they were eating _young_
grasshoppers. At that season he supposed that all the insects of the
year previous would be dead or torpid, and certainly full-grown, while
those of the coming summer would be still in the egg. Where could the
bird find half-grown grasshoppers? Being interested to explain this, he
watched the red-heads until he saw that one went frequently to a post,
and appeared to get something out of a crevice in its side. In that post
he found nearly a hundred grasshoppers, still alive, but wedged in so
tightly they could not escape. He also found other hiding-places all
full of grasshoppers, and discovered that the woodpeckers lived upon
these stores nearly all winter.
But it is not grasshoppers only that the red-head hoards, though he
is very fond of them. In some parts of the country it is easier to find
nuts than to find grasshoppers, and they are much less perishable food.
The red-head is very fond of both acorns and beechnuts. Probably he eats
chestnuts also. Who knows how many kinds of nuts the red-head eats? You
might easily determine not only what he will eat, but what he prefers,
if a red-headed woodpecker lives near you. Lay out different kinds of
nuts on different days, putting them on a shed roof, or in some place
where squirrels and blue jays would not be likely to dare to steal them,
and see whether he takes all the kinds you offer. Then lay out mixed
nuts and notice which ones he carries off first. If he takes all of one
kind before he takes any of the others, we may be sure that he has
discovered his favorite nut. Such little experiments furnish just the
information which scientific men are glad to get.
[Illustration]
It is well known that the red-head is very fond of beechnuts. Every
other year we expect a full crop of nuts, and close observation shows
that the red-heads come to the North in much larger numbers and stay
much later on these years of plenty than on the years of scanty crops.
Lately it has been discovered that they not only eat beechnuts all the
fall, but store them up for winter use. This time the observation was
made in Indiana. There, when the nuts were abundant, the red-heads were
seen busily carrying them off. Their accumulations were found in all
sorts of places: cavities in old tree-trunks contained nuts by the
handful; knot-holes, cracks, crevices, seams in the barns were filled
full of nuts. Nuts were tucked into the cracks in fence-posts; they were
driven into railroad ties; they were pounded in between the shingles on
the roofs; if a board was sprung out, the space behind it was filled
with nuts, and bark or wood was often brought to cover over the gathered
store. No doubt children often found these hiding-places and ate the
nuts, thinking they were robbing some squirrel's hoard.
In the South, where the beech-tree is replaced by the oak, the red-heads
eat acorns. I should like to know whether they store acorns as they do
beechnuts. Are chestnuts ever laid up for winter? How far south is the
habit kept up? Is it observed beyond the limits of a regular and
considerable snowfall? That is, do the birds lay up their nuts in order
to keep them out of the snow, or for some other reason?
It remains to be discovered if other woodpeckers have hoarding-places.
We know that the sapsucker eats beechnuts, and the downy and the hairy
woodpeckers also; that the red-bellied woodpecker and the golden-winged
flicker eat acorns; and I have seen the downy woodpecker eating
chestnuts, or the grubs in them, hanging head downward at the very tip
of the branches like a chickadee. It may be possible that some of these
lay up winter stores.
[Illustration: Head of the Lewis's Woodpecker.]
It is known that the Lewis's woodpecker occasionally shows signs of a
hoarding instinct. It was recently noted that in the San Bernardino
Mountains of California the Lewis's woodpecker, after driving away the
smaller Californian woodpeckers, tried to put acorns into the holes the
Carpenter had made, but, being unused to the work, did it very clumsily.
Soon after this observation was published, a boy friend living near
Denver told me that a short time before he had seen a woodpecker that
had a large quantity of acorns shelled and broken into quarters, on
which he was feeding. This woodpecker was identified beyond a doubt as
the Lewis's woodpecker. So we begin to suspect that the habit of storing
up food is not an uncommon one among the woodpeckers.
X
A STUDY OF ACQUIRED HABITS
Something interesting yet remains to be discovered of the hoarding habit
of the red-head. How strange that so familiar a bird should have a habit
so easily detected, and yet that no one in all these years should speak
of it! Who does not know how mice and chipmunks hide their food? Who has
not watched the blue jay skulking off to hide an acorn where he will be
sure to forget it? Who does not remember the articles his pet Jim Crow
stole and lost to him forever? The hoarding habit has long been observed
of many dull-colored, rare, or insignificant creatures. That one so
noisy, gay-colored, tame, and abundant as our red-headed woodpecker
should have the same habit and escape observation is certainly
remarkable. But though it is over twenty years since the storing of
grasshoppers was recorded and twelve since the practice of laying up
beechnuts was observed, very little seems to have been learned of the
habit since these records were made.
There are two points to be considered: the habit long remained unknown;
after it was discovered, it was long in being reaffirmed. It seems that,
if it were a general habit, more would be known about it. Now if it is
not a universal habit, it must be one of two alternatives, either a
custom falling into disuse, or a new one just being acquired. That a
habit so remarkable and so advantageous should be discarded after being
universal is scarcely possible; that a habit so noticeable, if it were
general, should remain unknown is improbable; that a habit which made
life in winter both secure and easy should, if introduced by a few
enterprising birds, become a universal custom, is not without a
parallel. The probabilities point to the custom of hoarding food as a
recently _acquired habit_.
Acquired habits are not rare among birds. The chimney swift has learned
to nest in chimneys since the Pilgrims landed; for there were no
chimneys before that time. There is the evidence of old writers to show
that they acquired the habit within fifty years of the time of the first
permanent settlements in New England. The eaves swallow learned to
transfer its nest from the side of a cliff to the side of a barn in less
time. Most birds will change their food as soon as a new dainty is
procurable, and they will even invent methods of getting it, if it is
much to their taste. The way the English sparrows have learned to tear
open corn husks so as to eat the corn in the milk is a good example, for
our maize does not grow in England, and they have had to learn about its
good qualities in the few years since they have become established
outside of the cities. Yet it is already a well-established habit. So
quickly does a habit spread from one bird to another, until it becomes
the rule instead of the exception! Acquired habits always show
adaptability, and often much forethought and reason. It is the shrewd
bird that learns new tricks.
Now there is not known among birds any evidence of greater forethought
and reason than working hard in pleasant weather, when food is plentiful
beyond all hope of ever exhausting it, to lay up provision for winter.
How does the woodpecker know that winter will come this year? That there
was a winter last year and the year before does not make it certain, but
only probable, that there will be one this year. We cannot know
ourselves that the seasons will change until we learn enough of
astronomy to understand the proof. Nor does instinct explain the habit,
as some would declare: since not all red-heads have the habit, though
all must have instinct. It would seem as if memory and reason had
devised this plan for outwitting winter, the bird's old enemy.
The red-head is not a grub-eating woodpecker. Though beetles make up a
third of his food, their larvæ do not form any part of it. Half his food
for the entire year is vegetable, and the animal portion is composed
principally of beetles, ants, caterpillars, and grasshoppers, which in
winter time are hidden in snug places, or are dead under the snow. There
are few berries in winter. The few seedy, weedy plants that stick up
above the snow give to the birds the little they have; but the
red-head's vegetable fare is limited at that season and his animal food
almost lacking. Winter in the North is all very well for the hairy and
downy cousins that like to hammer frozen tree-trunks for frozen grubs;
but our red-headed friend does not eat grubs by preference. Rather than
change his habits he will change his boarding-place. So he is a
migratory woodpecker, though the woodpeckers are naturally home-loving
birds, and do not migrate from preference. If, however, he can lay up a
store of vegetable or animal food, he can winter in any climate.
Hoarding is thus an invention as important to the woodpecker world as
electric cars and telephones are to men. The probabilities are that
this is a recent improvement in the red-head's ways of living.
Another set of facts increases the probabilities of our supposition. It
is a very delicate subject to handle because it affects the reputation
of a family in good standing; but there is positive proof that sometimes
the red-head has been guilty of crimes which would give a man a full
column in the newspapers with staring headlines. If such deeds were not
a thousand times less common among woodpeckers than they are among men
the red-head would be declared an outlaw. He has been proved to be a
hen-roost robber, a murderer, and a cannibal. In Florida he has sucked
hen's eggs. In Iowa he has been seen to kill a duckling. There is a
record in Ohio that he pecked holes in the walls of the eaves swallow's
nest and stole all the eggs, and that he was finally killed in the act
of robbing a setting hen's nest. Within the space of fifteen years, from
Montana, Georgia, Colorado, New York, and Ontario, in addition to the
records mentioned already from Florida, Ohio, and Iowa, come accounts of
his stealing birds' eggs and murdering and eating other birds. The
evidence is indisputable.
It is charity to suppose that this is the work of natural criminals, or
of degenerate, under-witted, or demented woodpeckers. Why should there
not be such individuals among birds? One point is certain: so notable a
habit could not long escape detection, since it is a barnyard crime. He
who robs hen's nests gets caught--if he is a bird. Either these
occurrences are very rare, not seen because of their extreme rarity, or
they indicate a new custom just coming in. And the same is true of the
habit of hoarding food; it is rare, or it is new.
The frequency of such occurrences can be determined only by observation;
but the time of their origin might be approximated in another way. If we
could fix the date when the bird could not have done what he is now
doing for simple lack of opportunity, we might say that the habit has
been acquired since a certain date--as we have said of the English
sparrow eating maize, of the chimney swift nesting in chimneys, and the
cliff swallow building under the eaves. But we have no such help on the
case of the red-head, which never has been without opportunities to get
birds' eggs and to kill other birds.
But there is a parallel case in another species where the date of an
acquired habit can be proved. In Florida the red-bellied woodpecker has
earned the names Orange Borer and Orange Sapsucker because he eats
oranges. It is true that he is not charged with doing damage, because
he attacks only the over-ripe and unmarketable fruit; it is known that
the habit is not general yet, for even where the birds are abundant only
a single bird or a pair will be found eating oranges, and always the
same pair, proving that it is a habit not yet learned by all of the
species; close observers declare, too, that it is but a few years since
the bird took up the habit; and, finally, we know that this must be the
case, for, though the wild orange was introduced by the Spaniards, the
sweet fruit was not extensively cultivated until recently. Here is a
habit which undoubtedly has been acquired within twenty years or so,
which will in all probability increase until instead of being the
exception it is the rule.
Why may not the red-head's occasional cannibalism, unless this is mere
individual degeneracy, and his more common custom of hoarding be habits
that he is acquiring? Why, indeed, may not the Californian woodpecker's
distinguishing trait be a habit which began like these among a few birds
here and there, wiser or more progressive than the rest, and which in
time became general and established? Why may not the two observed
instances of the Lewis's woodpecker be examples of a similar habit just
beginning? The very differences in their methods point to that
explanation. The Lewis's woodpecker that had seen the Carpenter's work
tried to imitate him; the one that lived outside his range adopted a way
of his own, unnoticed before among woodpeckers, and shelled and
quartered his nuts before he stored them.
It is remarkable that these four woodpeckers are cousins; they belong to
the same genus, and they have essentially the same structure, tastes,
and habits. Why should it be strange if their minds were alike too? if
they had a natural bent toward accumulativeness, and a natural desire to
try new wrinkles? We are sure that one of them has acquired a new habit
within a few years. Why may we not suppose as a basis and a spur to
further investigation that the others also are acquiring ways new and
strange?
XI
THE WOODPECKER'S TOOLS: HIS BILL
There is an old saying, "You may know a carpenter by his chips;" but,
though chips are seldom long absent when a woodpecker is about, can we
call the woodpecker a carpenter? Is he not both in his works and ways of
working--with the one exception of the Californian woodpecker--more of a
miner?
For the carpenter takes pieces of wood, bit by bit, and joins them
together till at last he has built a lofty skeleton or framework for his
dwelling, which last of all he covers over and closes in; and the tools
he uses are saw and hammer. With these alone he could build his house,
though it might be neither very large nor very good. When a carpenter's
house is finished, it is neither a cave nor a hole, but a pavilion built
in the open air after the model of a spreading tree,--which frames a
roof with its branches and shingles it with overlapping leaves. There is
nothing in the woodpecker's way of building which corresponds to that.
Quite different are the miner's methods. In the West, where the barren
mountain sides stretch up into snowclad summits, on the face of slopes
as seamed and gray and verdureless as the wrinkled trunk of an aged oak,
I have seen holes where human woodpeckers burrow. The entrance to a mine
half-way up a hillside looks strikingly like a woodpecker's hole and
scarcely larger. Nor does the likeness vanish as we think how in their
long tunnels inside their mountains of gold and iron and silver the
delving miners are picking and prying and picking to lengthen their
burrows just as the woodpeckers peck and pry and peck inside their
wooden mountain, the tree-trunk. Which shall we call the woodpecker--a
carpenter or a miner?
What are the miner's tools? Pick and drill, are they not? What are the
woodpecker's? The same. Certainly we shall see, if we stop to think,
that it is not a chisel that he uses, as we sometimes say. A chisel is a
knife driven by blows of a hammer; like a knife its effectiveness
depends upon the sharpness and length of its cutting edge. But a
woodpecker's bill is not a cutting tool. It is a wedge, but a wedge
working on a different principle from a knife-edge. Look at this one and
observe that, though strong and stout, it is not sharp and has no true
cutting edge. It is a tapering, square-ended, flat-sided tool, rather
six-sided at the base and holding its bevel and angles to the tip. The
woodpecker's bill is a pick, not a chisel. It is used like a pick, being
driven home with a heavy blow and getting its efficiency from its own
weight and wedge-shape and from the force with which it is impelled.
Watch the downy woodpecker at his work and see what sturdy blows he
delivers, pausing after each one to aim and drive home another telling
stroke. This is pick-axe work. But sometimes he rattles off a succession
of taps so short and quick that they blend together in one continuous
drumming, too light and quick to be likened to the ponderous swing of
the pick-axe. Now he is drilling. The work of a drill is to cut out a
small deep hole either by twirling (as in drilling metals) or by tapping
(as in drilling stone). The woodpecker drills by the latter method and
there is a curious likeness between his bill and the mason's tools.
[Illustration: Head of Ivory-billed Woodpecker.]
Any one who has lived in a granite country knows the deep round holes
that stone masons make when they split rock. Did you ever wonder why
they are as large at the bottom as at the top? If you remember the shape
of a mason's drill, you will recollect that it looks a little like a
stick of home-made molasses candy bitten off when it was just soft
enough to stretch a little. The mason's drill is a round iron rod with a
thin, flat end, sharpened on the edge and a little pointed in the
centre. In the flattening of the sides and the width across the tip its
end resembles that of a typical woodpecker's bill. The woodpeckers that
drill for grubs, especially the largest, the logcock and the
ivory-billed woodpecker, have the tip remarkably flattened. The likeness
to the drill does not go farther because the woodpecker's bill is a
combination tool; but it is drill-pointed rather than pick-pointed.
What is the advantage of this compressed tip? Can the bird pick as well
as he could with a sharp point? The bird and the mason reap the same
benefit from this form of tool. A sharp-pointed drill would bind in the
hole and could neither be driven ahead nor removed without difficulty,
but the sharp-edged tool cuts a hole as wide as the instrument. There
is, of course, some difference between working in stone and in wood, but
the principle is the same. The mason strikes his drill with his hammer
and cuts a crease in the stone; then lifts and turns the drill, cutting
a crease in another direction; and so by continually changing the
direction of the cuts until they radiate from a centre like the spokes
of a wheel, he finally reduces a little circle of stone to a powder fine
enough to be blown out of the hole. In drilling for a grub the
woodpecker must do much the same thing. He wishes to keep his hole small
at the top so as to save work, yet it must be large enough at the bottom
to admit the borer when nipped between his mandibles; therefore he needs
an instrument that, like a drill or a chisel, will cut a straight-sided
hole. Indeed, we might call it a chisel just as well if it were not a
double-wedge instead of a single wedge and if it did not move when it is
struck instead of being held stationary beneath the blows.
When he is digging his house the woodpecker uses his bill as a pick-axe.
When he is digging for grubs he uses it as a drill. Now some species
drill very little and some a great deal, according to the number of
grubs they feed on; but all dig holes to nest in,--that is, all use
their bills as picks but only a few employ them as drills. The flickers,
for example, seldom drill for grubs, their food being picked up on the
surface or dug from the earth; yet they excavate the deepest, roomiest
holes made by any woodpeckers of their size; they use their bills
effectively as pick-axes, but seldom, very seldom, as drills. And what
do we find? No drill-point--not a truncate, compressed bill fit for
drilling, but a sharper, pointed, rounded, _curving_ bill. Notice the
ordinary pick-axe and see how much nearer the flicker's bill than the
logcock's or the ivory-billed woodpecker's it is. Why is a flicker's
bill better for being curved also? Why do the drilling woodpeckers have
a perfectly straight bill? We should find by studying the birds and
their food that there is a direct relation between the shape of the bill
and the amount of drilling a woodpecker does; that the grub-eating or
drilling woodpeckers have a straight bill, for working in small deep
holes, while the flickers have a curved bill for prying out chips. And
we should note that the flicker's bill is most like the ordinary bill of
perching birds, while the drilling bill, as typified by the logcock's
and the hairy woodpecker's bills, is a more specialized tool, limited to
fewer uses, but more effective within its limits.
There is another detail of the woodpecker's bills which casts light upon
their habits. The species that drill most have their nostrils closely
covered by little tufts of stiff feathers, scarcely more than bristles,
which turn forward over the nostril. The density and the length of these
tufts agree very well with the kind of work the woodpecker does; for in
the hairy and the downy, which are continually drilling and raising a
dust in rotten wood, they are very thick and noticeable, while in the
red-head and the sapsucker they show as scarcely more than a few loose
bristles, and in the flicker they barely cover the nostril. This seems a
plain provision to keep the dust out of the bird's lungs; and we might
cite as additional evidence the fact that the only other birds of
similar tree-pecking habits, the nuthatches and the chickadees, have
their nostrils protected in the same way. But we must always be cautious
before drawing inferences of this sort to see what may be said on the
other side. When we recollect that the crows and ravens and many kinds
of finches, among other birds, none of which dig in the bark of trees or
raise a dust, have their nostrils as completely covered, we see that we
have perhaps discovered a _use_ for these nasal tufts but not the
_cause_ of their being there. We must be careful not to mistake cause
and accompaniment in our endeavor to explain differences in structure.
Let us see what we have learned and how to interpret it:--
That the woodpecker's bill is a combination of drill and pick-axe.
That the shape varies with the use to which it is most commonly put.
That the use varies with the food principally eaten; or, what is a step
farther back, that the different kinds of food must be sought in
different places and by different methods, and therefore require
different tools.
Therefore the shape of the woodpecker's bill has a direct relation to
the kind of food he eats. Please notice that we do not assert that it
_causes_ him to eat a certain kind of food nor that a certain diet may
not have affected the shape of the bill, causing it to be what we now
see. Both may be at least partially true, but to prove either or both
would need profound study, and all that we have observed is that the
shape of the woodpecker's bill is _adapted_ to his food and that it
varies with the kind of food he eats, or, to be more exact, with his
ways of procuring it.
XII
THE WOODPECKER'S TOOLS: HIS FOOT
We have studied the woodpecker's bill and have found that it is a very
serviceable tool. We shall find that his feet are equally well adapted
to their work.
Here is the foot of a woodpecker. Observe how it differs from a
chicken's foot, or a sparrow's foot. What is it that especially fits it
for climbing? Perhaps you will notice that the tarsus is short, and you
may be able to explain why it would be a disadvantage for a climbing
bird to have long legs, as well as why it is a help for him to have long
toes. Toes long and legs short is the rule with the woodpeckers.
[Illustration: Foot of Woodpecker.]
I never see a woodpecker's foot without thinking of an iceman's nippers
with their short handles and long, sharp-toothed jaws. They are designed
for similar uses,--to lift heavy weights by laying hold of smooth, flat
surfaces. The iceman sets his nippers into the ice and lifts the block;
but the bird sets his claws into the tree and lifts his own body.
Suppose the nippers had one short jaw and one long one, would they then
take as firm hold as they do with jaws of equal length? In perching
birds the hind toe is much the shortest, but they sit balanced upon a
limb and have merely to hold themselves in position. The woodpecker
climbing a tree-trunk is out of balance; he would fall off unless he had
a firm grip; and he could not get this firm hold if his hind toes were
not long enough to give his foot a nearly equal spread back and forward.
Other birds grasp a limb with the whole under surface of their toes, but
the woodpecker when on a smooth, upright tree-trunk nips it only with
his toenails. Try with your own hand to hold a stick as large and heavy
as you can grasp, and you will see that when you clasp your hand around
it as a perching bird takes hold of a perch, it makes little difference
that the thumb is shorter than the fingers, but when you try to nip it
with your finger tips alone, you must bend your fingers until they are
not much longer than your thumb,--that is, a pair of nippers must be
equal jawed.
This simple illustration shows why the woodpecker's foot reaches as far
backward as forward. But a sensible objection may be raised, namely,
that as there are two hind toes of unequal length, it is by no means
certain which is the more necessary.
[Illustration: Diagram of right foot.]
Scientists tell us that a woodpecker's foot, though it looks so unlike a
chicken's, is really very much the same. When we ask how one of the
front toes disappeared and how the extra hind toe came to be where it
is, they tell us that there has been no addition and no loss, but the
extra hind toe is only a front toe turned backward. They call it a
_reversed fourth toe_. A bird's toes are numbered in order starting with
the hind toe and going around the _inside_ of the foot to the outer or
fourth toe. The hind toe is the thumb, and the others are numbered in
the same order as the fingers of our hands. So we see that the
woodpecker's real hind toe is rather small, like that of most birds. It
looks very much as if it had been found _too_ small and as if another
had turned back to help it do its work. Do you say that a bird cannot
turn his toes about in this way? Most cannot, to be sure, but all of the
owls can do it. An owl will sit either with two toes forward and two
backward, or with three forward and one the other way. The owls have a
reversible outer toe, and perhaps the woodpeckers did also before it
became permanently reversed.
[Illustration: Foot of Three-toed Woodpecker.]
That this is exactly what had happened is curiously confirmed. There are
a few woodpeckers in this country which have but three toes. They are
the only North American land birds with less than four toes (though many
sea and shore birds have but three). Compare this picture with a
four-toed woodpecker's foot. One toe is gone completely, when or how no
one can tell. But in some way the _first_ toe, the _thumb_, the one we
always begin to count from, has disappeared. The one left is the
reversed fourth toe, as we know by the number of joints in it.
Undoubtedly this woodpecker needed a hind toe, but he must have needed a
longer, stronger one than his natural first toe. A toe of the right
length was supplied by turning one of the front toes back, and the short
hind toe in some way disappeared.
This may seem a roundabout way to show that a woodpecker's foot is a
pair of nippers. First we studied nippers till we found out that they
were not good nippers unless they were nearly equal-limbed. Next we
studied the woodpecker's foot to learn about that extra hind toe. Then
it occurred to us that four toes were not necessary, since some of our
best climbers have but three. What was the essential point? Might it not
be a foot equally divided without reference to the number of toes? But
that is the principle of a pair of nippers. Then came the question, is
there any similarity in their use? Yes, the nippers are used to lift
heavy weights, and the woodpecker's foot is used to lift his heavy body
in just the same way, by taking hold of a flat, smooth surface. We
conclude that a wide-spread, equally divided, nipping foot would be the
best device possible for the woodpecker's way of living, and we find by
examination that every woodpecker shows this type of foot.
There is additional evidence that this is the right explanation. Our
only other North American birds that climb on the bark of trees
professionally, as we may say, are the brown creepers and the
nuthatches. In both these the tarsus is short, as we found it in the
woodpeckers, and the hind toe and its claw are fully equal to the middle
toe and claw, making an equally divided foot. On the other hand, the
foot with two toes forward and two toes backward is confined neither to
woodpeckers nor to climbing birds. The parrots, which climb after a
fashion, have it; but so do the cuckoos, which do not climb, some of
which, like our road-runner, or ground cuckoo of the West, are strictly
terrestrial. The "yoking" of the toes may occur by the reversion of the
fourth toe, as ordinarily, or of the second toe, as in the trogons; the
arrangement appears to be definitely related to the distribution of the
tendons that control the toes. But though accounting for the structure
may give a clue to its descent, it does not justify its efficiency. The
yoke-toed foot is not exclusively a climbing foot. All our families of
climbers have at least one representative with but one toe behind, and
this clearly proves that the yoke-toed structure is by no means
necessary even though it may be an honorable inheritance among climbers.
The natural conclusion is that the important point in climbing is not
the number nor the arrangement of the toes, but the length of at least
one hind toe so as to give an equally divided foot.
There is an interesting point to notice about the woodpeckers. This
reversed fourth toe is curiously variable in length. In the flickers,
with its claw, it is a little shorter than the middle (third) toe with
its claw; in the red-heads and their friends it a little exceeds the
middle toe and claw; in the downy and the hairy it is much the longest
toe, and in the ivory-billed woodpecker it is abnormally developed. We
at once judge that it is some indication of the bird's manner of life,
and we look for it to be largest in the species that live continually
upon the trunks of trees, obtaining most of their food by drilling. We
expect to see the finest development of drilling bill accompany this
enormously developed toe, and we find them both in the ivory-billed
woodpecker. In imagination we clearly see the use of it. The great bird,
keen in his quest of grubs, sidling hastily round the tree, in an
unsteady balance and unsupported by his tail, throws one long hind toe
downward to steady himself, hooks the other into the bark above him, and
hangs between the two as firmly supported as in his ordinary position.
No doubt he does do this, but does it prove the supposition that the
heaviest and most arboreal woodpeckers have the greatest development of
the fourth toe? Not at all. There is our rare acquaintance the logcock,
or pileated woodpecker, a bird nearly as large as the ivory-billed, one
of the most persistent of our tree-climbers and more than any other
woodpecker I ever observed given to scratching rapidly round and round a
tree-trunk, clinging at ease in almost any position except
head-downward, and drilling incessantly and at all seasons for grubs; he
is a typical woodpecker of the largest size, but his hind toe and claw
are, if anything, a trifle shorter than his middle toe with its claw. He
throws it out and uses it as we have described, but it has not that
disproportion to the other toes which we expected to find as the result
of a strictly arboreal life.
What have we proved? We have not shown that the long toe is _not_ more
useful than the shorter one,--that is a matter of observation; but we
have failed entirely to show that it is so, and this can be done only in
one of two ways: either by proving that the logcock's habits are not
what all previous observers have believed them to be,--which would be
assuming a great burden of proof; or by demonstrating that his ancestry
explains why his feet do not illustrate our theory,--and this, though it
is undoubtedly the true solution, could be settled only by a very
learned man.
But we have encountered one truth which must always be held in mind in
science--that a theory is not proved while a single fact remains
rebellious and unsubdued. We might have examined every other woodpecker
in the continent but just one; we might have seen that every other one
agreed with our theory, as it does; we might have supposed that the
explanation was good past doubting; but that one exception--if it was a
logcock--would still over-turn the whole theory; and the very facts that
we relied upon to strengthen us--its resemblance in size, habits, shape,
and color to the ivory-billed woodpecker--have been the strongest
possible means of totally demolishing our fine theory. We have learned,
if nothing more, that all the facts must be examined and accounted for
before an explanation is accepted as indisputable.
XIII
THE WOODPECKER'S TOOLS: HIS TAIL
If we study the woodpecker's anatomy and observe his broad, strong,
highly-arched hip-bones and the heavy, triangular "ploughshare" bone in
which the tail feathers are planted, as well as the stiffness and
strength of the tail itself, we must conclude that it is not by accident
that he uses his tail as a prop. The whole structure shows that the bird
was intended "to lean on his tail." What we wish to discover is how good
a tail it is to lean on.
[Illustration: Tail of Hairy Woodpecker.]
Our first impression is that the woodpecker's tail might be improved.
Why are not the tips of the feathers stiffer? Why is it so rounded? Most
of the work seems to fall on the middle feathers, and in some species,
as the downy and the hairy woodpeckers, these end in decurved tips so
soft and unresisting that they seem quite unfit to give any support.
Would it not be better if the woodpecker's tail had been cut square
across and made of feathers equally rigid and ending in short stiff
spines? For we see that the woodpecker's tail is not only weak in its
inner feathers, but weaker still in its outer ones, and it is stiff, in
most species, only in the upper three fourths of its length.
When we propose a change in nature it is wise to inquire whether our
improvement has not been tried before and to learn how it worked. How
many kinds of birds have we that use their tails for a support? What are
their habits and what sort of tails have they?
[Illustration: Tails of Brown Creeper (under surface) and Chimney Swift
(upper surface.)]
Besides the woodpeckers we have but two kinds of land birds that prop
themselves with their tails,--the swifts and the creepers. The creeper
has a tail very much like the woodpecker's as it is; while the chimney
swift's is precisely like the woodpecker's as we thought it ought to be.
But we observe that while the creeper's habits are almost precisely
like the woodpecker's,--so much so that when we first make his
acquaintance, some of us will be sure we have discovered a new kind of
woodpecker,--the chimney swift has but one habit in common with the
woodpecker, that of clinging to an upright surface and propping himself
by his tail. If the bird with the tail most like the woodpecker's has
the woodpecker's habits, is it not a fair inference that this form of
tail is better fitted to this way of living than the other would be?
Next, what variations in shapes do we observe among the woodpeckers
themselves? The logcock and the ivory-billed woodpecker have the longest
tails--because they are the largest birds. When we compare the length of
the tails with the length of the birds we are surprised at the results.
On measuring sixteen species, representing seven genera, I find that the
tail is from three tenths to thirty-five hundredths of the entire
length; that it is, in proportion, as long in the flicker as in the
ivory-bill, as long in the downy as in the logcock, and longer (in the
specimens measured) in the almost wholly terrestrial flicker than in the
wholly arboreal logcock. Without much more study all that we can safely
infer is that the woodpecker's tail is not far from one third the
length of his whole body measured from the tip of the bill to the tip of
the tail. Probably this is the proportion most convenient for his work.
[Illustration: Middle tail feathers of Flicker, Ivory-billed Woodpecker,
and Hairy Woodpecker.]
All woodpeckers' tails agree in one particular: they are rounded at the
end. At first sight we would say that some are but slightly rounded and
others very deeply graduated; but as nearly as I can determine this is
at least partly an optical illusion, explained by the great difference
in the shape of the feathers making up the tail, which in some, as the
flicker, are very broad and abruptly pointed, and in others taper
gradually to the end and are very narrow for their length. The larger
birds naturally appear to have longer tails, and the effect of narrow
feathers is to make the tails appear longer and more sharply graduated
than they really are. This diagram shows the shape of the curve in six
species, and indicates that, while the curvature is less than we might
expect, it bears some relation to the bird's way of living; for we see
that the strictly arboreal woodpeckers have more pointed tails than the
terrestrial species, and that the amount of gradation bears a direct
relation to the amount of time spent upon the tree-trunks.
There is a third difference, the shape of the individual feather, to
which we shall refer again; but now we wish to examine the uses and
meaning of the curved end.
[Illustration]
Diagram of curvature of tails of Woodpeckers. Drawn to scale.
_a_, _a_, point of insertion in
rump.
_a_, _b_, outer tail feather.
_a_, _c_, middle tail feather.
If the outer tail feather were of the same length in all cases, the
curve at the end of the tail would be represented by the dotted lines.
1. Flicker.
2. Red-headed Woodpecker.
3. Downy Woodpecker.
4. Logcock.
5. Central American Ivory-billed
Woodpecker.
6. North American Ivory-billed
Woodpecker.
I will show you how to prove this point so that you may be satisfied
about it even if you should never see a woodpecker. We will make a
little experiment, so simple that even a child can understand it.
First, how many shapes can any bird's tail have? It may be one of three
general patterns, and it can be nothing else unless we combine those
patterns. It may be square across the end, it may have the middle
feathers longest, or it may have the outer feathers longest. To one of
these patterns every form of birds' tails may be referred; you can
invent no other shape.
Let us assume that you know nothing whatever of a woodpecker's tail
except that it has ten feathers, is used as a prop, and is held at an
angle of thirty or forty degrees with the tree-trunk. Now, take three
strips of paper of the same width and length, and of any size not
inconveniently small. Fold them all down the centre. Cut one square
across; cut one with a rounded end and the third with a forked end,
making them of any shape you please so long as the three papers are of
the same length. To give our models a fair test they must be of the same
width and length. Next, pin a sheet of paper of any size you please into
the form of a cylinder and stand it on end to represent a tree-trunk.
Then fit the patterns to the tree-trunk and see which is the form that
would give the most support.
[Illustration: Patterns of tails.]
But first, in how many ways is it possible for a bird to use his tail as
a prop? He may of course hold it open or closed; and the open tail may
be held in a single plane, "spread flat," as we say; or curved up at the
edges, like a crow blackbird's; or curved down at the edges. And the
closed tail may be held in a single plane; or, by dropping each pair of
feathers a little, in several planes. Thus we see there are five
positions in which each shape may be held against the cylinder of paper.
Try each one against it, holding it first in the open positions and then
after folding the paper like a bird's tail with the outer feathers
underneath, in the closed positions. The size of the model tree-trunk
and the shape you cut your curves will make the results vary a little,
but you will be surprised to observe, if your models are not too small,
how many times you will get the same answers. Note the number and
position of the pairs that touch:
_Spread._ _Square end._ _Forked end._ _Round end._
one plane, varies varies middle pair
curved up, middle pair middle pair middle pair
curved down, all all all
_Closed._
one plane, outer pair outer pair middle pair
different planes, outer pair outer pair all
Which shape brings the most feathers into use in all positions? Which
positions bring most feathers into use? We see at once that the rounded
end has a decided advantage, that the middle pair of feathers is used in
all possible positions, that the pair next outside is the next
important, and that the spread tail curving downward at the edges and
the closed tail in different planes are the two shapes which give the
best support. There is therefore a reason for the rounded end which we
said was the rule among the woodpeckers.
Our little experiment is what we call a _deduction_. It shows us what we
ought to expect under certain imaginary conditions. But it does not show
us what actually exists, so there often comes a time when our deductions
are faulty because Nature has done some unexpected thing, as when we
found the single exception of the logcock's foot upsetting a fine theory
of ours. A deduction must always be compared with facts, and is worth
little or nothing if a single fact of the series we are studying is not
explained by it. This time all the facts do agree; for I had, before we
made our experiment, examined the tails of every species of woodpecker
ever found in North America, and there was no exception to the rounded
end. I had already drawn my conclusion that this form was better
adapted to life on a tree-trunk than the square or the forked tail would
be, reasoning by a different process called _induction_. An induction
examines many, and, if possible, all the facts before drawing any
conclusion; a deduction examines the facts after the conclusion is
reached. There is no hard-and-fast line between the two kinds of
reasoning, but we may say that a _deduction is reasoning out a guess and
an induction is guessing out a reason_. Deductions are easier and
quicker; inductions are surer, and in preparing them we often make other
discoveries.
The rounded tail is no doubt the best; but we have yet to decide whether
the sharper curve is more advantageous than the lesser curve, as we
thought probable from our observations. And there is still another
deduction from our experiment which we did not make. If in the rounded
tail the middle pairs of feathers do most of the work, and if use
increases the size and efficiency of a part, which is almost an axiom in
science, we should expect to find the middle tail feathers not only
strongest in all woodpeckers but also strongest in increasing ratio in
the species that use them most. To determine this we must study the use
of the tail and the structure and shape of the individual tail
feathers.
We should remark, perhaps, that the woodpecker's tail is always composed
of twelve feathers--ten pointed rectrices and two tiny abortive feathers
so short and so hidden that no attention is paid to them. The ten
principal feathers are arranged in corresponding pairs numbered from the
outside to the centre as first, second, third, fourth, and fifth pairs.
In the flickers all ten feathers have wide vanes and are similar in
everything but the shape; all are more or less pointed. The flicker's
tail looks and feels very much like that of any other bird except that
the shafts are stiffer and the vanes contract to an acuminate tip. But
as we take up the other species we notice a change, not only in the
shape of the feathers but much more in their texture and in the
difference between the various pairs. While in the flicker four pairs
out of five are pointed and all are rigid, in the downy and the hairy
three pairs out of five seem to be too soft to give any support, the
sharp points have disappeared, and the tail has lost much of its
stiffness. The two middle pairs of feathers are the only ones capable of
doing much work and they are wavering and infirm at the tips where we
should expect them to be strongest. In the logcock it is about the
same,--two pairs are apparently unfit for work, one pair is infirm, and
the two middle pairs are compelled to give all the support, except the
little contributed by the third pair. In the ivory-billed woodpecker the
two outer pairs are of no assistance and the three central ones do the
work, and here again we find the base of the rectrices rigid and
inflexible and the last fourth of their length weak and yielding. But
what a difference in the individual feather! It is well able to do all
the work; for, except for that weak tip which we cannot now explain, it
is one of the toughest and strongest feathers to be found. The shaft is
broad and flat, as elastic as a watch-spring; it looks like a band of
burnished steel as it runs down between the vanes. And the vanes
themselves are of a very curious pattern. They curl under at the edges
so that we do not see their whole width, and the barbs crowd so thickly
upon each other that they over-lie until they present an edge three or
four broad. Indeed, the under side of one of these tail feathers reminds
one of nothing so much as of the under side of a star-fish's arm with
its two long lines of ambulacral suckers on each side of a central
groove, so thickly do the spiny vanes of these strong rectrices over
ride and crowd together. These spines lay hold of the bark of the tree,
rank after rank, hundreds of bristling points that cannot be dislodged
except by a forward motion of the bird or by lifting the tail. Compared
with this, the spiny points on the flicker's tail were a poor invention.
This device, which takes hold like a wool card, or a wire hair-brush,
cannot slip from place. We begin to see, too, the use of that weak and
flexible tip; it is to press down upon the tree-trunk a flat surface
sufficiently large to hold hundreds of these little spiny points against
the bark. The ivory-bill braces against this with the stiff upper part
of the shaft and has a support that will not slip. The upper part of the
shaft acts like a spring also, and adds tremendous force to the blow of
the bill. Watch a hairy woodpecker when hard at work and see how his
legs and tail form a triangular base by bracing against each other, and
how his blow is delivered, not with the head alone, but with the whole
body, swinging from the hips, the apex of the triangle on which he
rests. He swings like a man wielding a sledge hammer, and to the
strength of his neck adds the weight of his body, the spring of his
tail, and the momentum of a blow delivered from a greater height. When
the little hairy woodpecker does so much with his weak body, we can
imagine what great birds like the logcock and the ivory-billed
woodpecker, with their tremendous beaks, their huge claws, their springy
tails, and their great physical strength can do. They are magnificent
birds, the terror of all the grubs that hide in tree-trunks.
[Illustration: Under side of middle tail feather of Ivory-billed
Woodpecker.]
One point we have left unexplained: What is the advantage, if there is
any, in the sharper curve to the tails of the arboreal woodpeckers? It
is a simple question. The curve is caused by the unequal length of the
tail feathers; each tail feather is a prop, and by their inequality they
become props of different lengths. Now ask any carpenter which will best
support a tottering wall--props all of the same length set at the same
angle, or props of different lengths set at different angles? His answer
will help you to solve the problem. But if a little is good, why are not
all the pairs used as props? Partly, perhaps, because the woodpecker is
always crowded for houseroom, and while he must have tail enough, he
cannot afford to have any which he does not use. Did you ever think what
an inconvenience any tail at all must be in a woodpecker's hole?
XIV
THE WOODPECKER'S TOOLS: HIS TONGUE
We have seen how the woodpecker spears his grubs: now we will study his
spear.
[Illustration: Tongue of Hairy Woodpecker. (After Lucas.)]
There are many interesting points about a woodpecker's tongue, and they
are not hard to understand. If a woodpecker would kindly let us take
hold of his tongue and pull it out to its full extent we should be
afraid we were "spoiling his machinery," for the tongue can be drawn out
almost incredibly--between two and three inches in a hairy woodpecker
and more in a flicker. A strange-looking object it is, much resembling
an angle-worm in form, color, and feeling; for it is round, soft, and
sticky, except at the flat, horny, bayonet-pointed tip, and as it lies
in the mouth it is wrinkled like the wrist of a loose glove; but it
grows smaller and smoother the more we pull it out. Evidently we are
only drawing it into its skin. But where does so much tongue come from?
Does it stretch like a piece of elastic cord? Or is a part hidden
somewhere? And if so, where is it kept?
[Illustration: Tongue-bones of Flicker. (After Lucas.)]
_a._ Cerato-hyals, fused and short.
_b._ Basi-hyal, long, slender.
_c._ Cerato-branchials.
_d._ Epibranchials.
Basi-branchial is wanting.
These questions are answered by studying the bones of the tongue, for
without bones it could not be guided as swiftly and surely as it is.
Indeed, all tongues have bones in them, as you will discover by cutting
carefully the slices near the root of an ox-tongue; but no other
creature has such long and elaborate tongue-bones as some of the
woodpeckers. They are the slenderest and most delicate little bony rods,
joined end to end, but not really hinged nor needing to be, because they
are so elastic. Here are the bones of a flicker's tongue. The little
knob at the end, marked _a_, bore the horny point of the tongue and
directed it; the straight shaft marked _b_ was inside the round part of
the tongue as it lay within the bird's mouth; but what was done with
these two long branches, fully three quarters of the entire length of
the bones? They are too sharply curved to pass down the bird's throat,
and, not being jointed, they cannot be doubled back in his mouth. They
were tucked away very neatly and curiously. As the hyoid or tongue-bone
lies in the mouth its branches diverge just in front of the gullet, and,
traveling along the inner sides of the fork of the lower jaw, pass up
over the top of the skull, looking in their sheath of muscles like two
tiny whipcords. But still the bones are too long by perhaps half an inch
for the place they occupy, and the ends must be neatly disposed of.
Usually both pass to the right nasal opening and along the hollow of the
upper mandible. Very rarely they may curl down around the eyeball in a
spiral spring. So when the flicker thrusts out his tongue he feels the
pull in the end of his nose, for the tip of the tongue being run out,
the long slender bones are drawn out of their hiding-places, down over
the skull until they lie flat along the roof of his mouth. As soon as
he wishes to shut his bill, back fly the little bones guided by their
hollow sheaths of elastic muscle into their hiding-place in the top of
the bill. The muscular covering is a part of the same soft envelope that
we saw lying in wrinkles at the root of the tongue. It covers the whole
length of the little bones just as the woven outside covers an elastic
cord.
[Illustration: Skull of Woodpecker, showing bones of tongue. _a._ Upper
end of windpipe and gullet.]
[Illustration: Hyoids of Sapsucker and Golden-fronted Woodpecker.]
Not all woodpeckers have tongues precisely like this. The sapsucker's is
the shortest of any, and reaches barely beyond the hinge of the jaws. In
the Lewis's woodpecker and others of his genus the branches of the hyoid
extend part-way up the back of the skull but in the kinds that live
principally upon borers they are very long and resemble the flicker's in
arrangement. The only other North American birds that have a tongue
built upon this plan are the hummingbirds, in which also it is
extensile. The flicker, in proportion to his size, has the longest
tongue of any bird known.
XV
HOW EACH WOODPECKER IS FITTED FOR HIS OWN KIND OF LIFE
We have studied the woodpeckers at some length: first, what all of them
do; next, what some that are peculiar in their ways do; lastly, how each
is fitted for a particular kind of life. At first we were inclined to
think they were all alike; but now we begin to see that there are very
real differences between them,--in tails, feet, bills, and tongues, and
at the same time in their food and habits.
The flicker's tail is less sharply curved than that of any other
woodpecker,--a sign that he is probably not exclusively a tree-dweller;
his bill is curved and rounded, a pick-axe rather than a drill,--an
indication that he does not dig for grubs; his feet do not tell us much;
but his long extensile tongue shows that, whatever he feeds upon, he
seeks it in holes. We find a tongue like this in no other bird, but
among mammals the aard-vark, the ant-bear, and the pangolins are all
similarly equipped, and all live on ants which they extract from their
mounds and burrows in hundreds by means of these round, sticky, and
extensile tongues. This is precisely the way the flicker gets his
living. He lives principally upon the ground or near it, pecks very
little except when digging his nest, and feeds largely upon ants,
thrusting his head into the ant-hills and drawing out the ants glued to
his tongue rather than speared by it. As he has been known to eat three
thousand ants for a meal, we see how much easier this is than spearing
them one by one.
The red-head is another type. The bill is still nearly of the pick-axe
model, the feet not especially different from the flicker's, the tail
rather better adapted to life on a tree-trunk, and the tongue entirely
unlike the flicker's,--not very extensile and heavily clothed near the
tip with long, thick, recurved bristles. We infer that though he may
climb well, he is not a drilling woodpecker to any great extent, and
that his tongue is adapted neither to extracting borers nor to eating
ants from their burrows. His habits bear out the inference. He is
arboreal, but his food is either vegetable or picked up from the
surface, rasped up rather than speared.
The sapsucker presents still another variation. The points to the tail
feathers are more acuminate and the tail itself more resembles that of
the tree-dwelling woodpeckers in shape; the feet are fitted for clinging
to the trunk; the bill, now perfectly straight and no longer smoothly
rounded but buttressed by strong angles that spring from the base and
run down toward the tip, is the bill of a woodpecker that lives by
drilling; but the tongue is wholly unadapted to catching grubs. What
kind of food can an arboreal woodpecker with a drilling bill find upon a
tree-trunk when his tongue can be extended only a fifth of an inch, and
is furnished with a brush of bristles at the end? We have answered that
question before: he eats the inner bark of trees and laps up the sap,
for which this brushy tip is excellently fitted. It has been observed
that the tongue much resembles the tongues of insect-eating birds, which
cannot be extended beyond the end of the bill. It is true that the
sapsucker catches great numbers of insects, taking them on the wing like
a flycatcher. But he also eats nearly as many ants as the flicker,
though their tongues are totally unlike. We have made the mistake
perhaps of thinking that ants live only underground and can be obtained
only by tongues like those of the flicker and the ant-bear, which hunt
them there. But ants are abundant on the surface of the ground, and
they excavate long tunnels in rotten wood. The black bear is a famous
ant-hunter, yet his tongue is like a dog's and he gets his ants by
lapping them up after he has torn open the rotten logs in which they
live. This is the way that the sapsucker obtains his ants, and the brush
of stiff hairs is a help to him in such work. We see, then, that it is
not so much the food as the manner of feeding that explains the form of
the tongue.
The downy and the hairy are a step farther along in their development.
The fourth toe is longer than the others, a condition that we do not
find in any of the woodpeckers not strictly arboreal; the tail is of the
improved pattern, holding by a brush of bristles rather than by one
stiff point at the end of each feather; the bill is heavier, broader at
the base, more heavily ridged, and in every way a stronger tool; and the
tongue is highly extensible and of the spear pattern, sharp-pointed and
barbed with recurved hooks. Everything about these birds indicates that
they are fitted to live on tree-trunks and to dig for borers. This,
indeed, is what they do.
But the great logcock and the ivory-billed woodpecker, though of the
same type as the other larvæ-eating woodpeckers, are more highly
developed along the same line. We notice the great strength of the
feet; the claws, as large and as sharp as a cat's; the enormous weight
and strength of the bill, compared with that of the other woodpeckers,
which enables them to cut into the hardest wood and even into frozen
green timber; and the great development of the tail, which now becomes a
strong spring to support and aid the bird in his work.
As we try to group these particulars under general heads, we see that we
have observed three things:--
_That the structure of a bird is adapted to its kind of life._
_That the structure varies by small degrees with the kind of life._
_That the kind of life is conditioned largely upon the kind of food and
upon the method of procuring it, more particularly the latter._
These are not so much different truths as three aspects of one truth.
When we study the first we see why birds are grouped together into
orders and families: we study their resemblances. When we observe the
second we see why they are divided into species, for we note their
differences. But when we consider the third and reflect that birds have
the power to choose new kinds of food or new places and means of getting
it, we see how it is that there can come to be new kinds of birds, new
subspecies and species, springing up from time to time. Wonderful and
improbable as it seems, there is more reason to believe than there is to
doubt that new kinds of animals and plants are constantly in process of
making; that the laws of change are constantly at work, adapting
creatures to their surroundings or crushing them out of existence
because they will not learn new ways. And it is probable that these
differences which we mark in the woodpeckers have been the result of
efforts to adapt themselves to a peculiar kind of life where food was
abundant; and also that by acquired habits and by acquired tastes for
different kinds of foods they will be subject to still further
variations in the future.
XVI
THE ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN
But if the birds are making themselves into new species, where is the
place for God in the universe? Did not God make all kinds of creatures
in the beginning? How can they go on being made without God?
These are questions every one ought to ask, but--did God leave his world
after He had made it and go a long way off? Did He wind it up like a
watch to go till it should run down? Is the world a machine, or is it
alive?
Long ago the wise and good man Socrates argued that if you did not know
there was a God at all, you could at least infer it because everything
was so wonderfully made. "There is our body," said he: "every part of it
so perfect and so reasonable. Consider how the eyes not only please us
with agreeable sensations but are protected in every way. The eyebrows
stand like a thicket to keep the perspiration from them, the lids are a
curtain to shut out too great light, the lashes screen them from
dust,--everything is planned for some wise and reasonable end. And
where the evidence of design is so convincing must we not believe that
there was a Designer?" Words like these he spoke, and we know because
everything is so perfectly contrived that there must have been a
contriver, who knew all from the beginning. We are compelled to believe
that there is a God.
Shall we believe it less because we find in the creatures about us
intelligence and the power to care for their own lives? Has God gone on
a visit because these living creatures are looking out for themselves?
Were they made less perfectly in the beginning because when new
conditions surround them they are able to change to meet the strange
requirements? This is not less evidence of a Designer, but more. It was
long said that the existence of a watch was proof of a watchmaker who
had planned and put together all the parts so that they worked
harmoniously. But if the watch had the power to grow small to fit a
small pocket, or large to fit a large one, to become luminous by night,
and to correct its own time by the sun instead of being regulated by
outside interference, what should we have said--that it was proof there
was no watchmaker? or that it showed a far more skillful one, since he
could make a living, self-regulating, adaptive watch?
And so of the world and the creatures in it. Every evidence we get that
they can care for themselves, that they can adapt themselves to new
conditions, that they are intelligent and reasonable, capable of
improvement in habits or in structure, is so much surer proof that a
wise God made them what they are. Evolution--for that is the name by
which we call these changes--does not take God out of the universe but
makes the need of Him stronger. The argument from design is immensely
strengthened when we consider that we have not only an obedient machine
acting according to a few fundamental rules, but one that is intelligent
also and capable of self-modification.
APPENDIX
_Explanation of Terms._
[Illustration: Head of a Flicker.]
_a._ Forehead; _b._ crown; _c._ occiput; _d._ nape; _e._ chin; _f._
throat; _g._ jaw-patch, or mustache.
_Occipital_ means "on the occiput."
_Nuchal_ means "on the nape."
_Primaries_ are the nine or ten wing-quills borne upon the last
joint of the wing.
_Secondaries_ are the wing-quills attached to the fore-arm bones.
_Tertiaries_ are the wing-quills springing from the upper arm
bones.
_Wing coverts_ are the shorter lines of feathers overlapping these
long quills.
_Tail coverts_ are the lengthened feathers that overlap the root of
the tail both above and below, called respectively upper and under
tail coverts.
_Ear coverts_ are the feathers that over-lie the ear, often
specially modified or colored.
_Rump_, the space between the middle of the back and the root of
the tail.
[M] is the sign used to indicate the male sex.
[F] is the sign used to indicate the female sex.
A _subspecies_ is a geographical race, modified in size, color, or
proportions chiefly by the influence of climate. These variations
are especially marked in non-migratory birds of wide distribution,
subject, therefore, to climatic extremes. The Downy and the Hairy
Woodpeckers, for example, are split up into numerous races. It
should be remembered that when a species has been separated into
races, or subspecies, all the subspecies are of equal rank, even
though they are differently designated. The one originally
discovered and first described bears the old Latin name which
consisted of two words, while the new ones are designated by triple
Latin names--the old binomial and a new name in addition. The
binomial indicates the form first described. The forms designated
by trinomials may be equally well known, abundant, and widely
distributed. For example, among the woodpeckers, the northern form
of the Hairy Woodpecker was first discovered and bears the name
_Dryobates villosus_; but the first Downy Woodpecker described was
a southern bird, and the northern form was not separated until a
few years ago, so that the southern bird is the type, and the
northern one bears the trinomial, _Dryobates pubescens medianus_.
_North America_, by the decision of the American Ornithologists'
Union, is held to include the continent north of the present
boundary between Mexico and the United States, with Greenland, the
peninsula of Lower California, and the islands adjacent naturally
belonging to the same.
The following key and descriptions will enable the student to
identify any woodpecker known to occur within these limits:
A. KEY TO THE WOODPECKERS OF NORTH AMERICA.
Family characteristics: color always striking, usually in spots, bars,
or patches of contrasting colors, especially black and white. Sexes
usually unlike; male always with some portion of red or yellow about
head, throat, or neck. Tails stiff, rounded, composed of ten fully
developed pointed feathers (and two undeveloped feathers). Wings large,
rounded, with long, conspicuous secondaries, and short coverts. Bill
straight, stout, of medium length. Toes four, arranged in pairs, except
in the three-toed genus. Iris brown, except when noted. Marked by a
habit of clinging to upright surfaces and digging a deep hole in a
tree-trunk for nesting. Eggs always pearly white.
I. Very large--18 inches _or more_; conspicuously crested. A. II. Medium
or small--14 inches _or less_; never crested. B.
A. a^1 Bill gleaming _ivory white_; fourth toe decidedly longest.
Ivory-billed Woodpecker. 1.
a^2 Bill _blackish_; fourth toe not decidedly longest.
Pileated Woodpecker or Logcock. 14.
B. a^1 Toes three; [M] with _yellow_ crown.
Three-toed Woodpeckers. 9 & 10.
a^2 Toes four; crown never yellow (b).
b^1 _Not spotted nor streaked either above or below_ (c).
c^1 Body clear black; _head white_.
White-headed Woodpecker. 8.
c^2 Blue-black above; _rump white_; _head_ and _neck red_.
Red-headed Woodpecker. 15.
c^3 Greenish black above, with _pinkish red belly_.
Lewis's Woodpecker. 17.
c^4 Greenish black with _sulphur yellow forehead_ and
_throat._
Californian Woodpecker. 16.
c^5 Glossy blue-black with _scarlet throat_ and _yellow
belly_.
Male of Williamson's Sapsucker. 13.
b^2 _Spotted with black or brown on breast and sides_,
but not streaked nor barred with white (d).
d^1 _Brown_ spots on breast and sides; upper parts plain
brown.
Arizona Woodpecker. 7.
d^2 _Black_ spots on breast and sides; wings and tail
brilliantly colored beneath (e).
e^1 Wings and tail _golden_ beneath; mustaches
_black_ in male, wanting in female.
Flicker. 21.
e^2 Wings and tail _golden_ beneath; mustaches
_red_ in both sexes.
Gilded Flicker. 23.
e^3 Wings and tail _golden red_ beneath; mustaches red.
Red-shafted Flicker. 22.
e^4 Wings and tail _golden red_ beneath; mustaches red;
crown brown.
Guadalupe Flicker. 24.
b^3 _Streaked, spotted, or barred with white on back and wings_ (f).
f^1 _Back streaked_, _plain_, or _varied_, _never_ barred
with white; wings _spotted_ with white (g).
g^1 _Clear_ white and black; _white streak down the
back_ (h).
h^1 Medium size, 9-11 inches.
Hairy Woodpecker. 2.
h^2 Small size, 6-7 inches.
Downy Woodpecker. 3.
g^2 _Grayish_ white and black; _sides closely barred_ (i).
i^1 Back plain black, white _stripe_ down side of throat.
Female of Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker. 9.
i^2 Back with interrupted white stripe, white _line_
down side of throat.
Female of American Three-toed Woodpecker. 10.
(NOTE.--The males are similar with the addition
of the yellow crown. The three toes
cannot ordinarily be seen in life.)
g^3 _Yellowish_ (often dingy or smutty), white and black;
under parts yellowish; back varied with white, no
line nor streak; _rump white_; _white wing-bars_ (j).
j^1 Breast with black patch; head of adult with red
patches.
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. 11.
j^2 Breast and head red.
Red-breasted Sapsucker. 12.
f^2 _Back barred with white_; wings spotted or barred with
white (k).
k^1 Belly _white; ear coverts white_.
Red-cockaded Woodpecker. 4.
k^2 Belly _white; forehead black_.
Nuttall's Woodpecker. 6.
k^3 Belly _smoky brown_; forehead and breast same.
Texan Woodpecker. 5.
k^4 Belly _sulphur or lemon yellow_.
Female of Williamson's Woodpecker. 13.
k^5 Belly _pinkish red_.
Red-bellied Woodpecker. 18.
k^6 Belly _yellow_, hind neck and forehead orange.
Golden-fronted Woodpecker. 19.
k^7 Belly _yellow_, hind neck brown.
Gila Woodpecker. 20.
B. DESCRIPTIONS OF THE WOODPECKERS OF NORTH AMERICA.
The following are descriptions of all the species of Woodpeckers found
in North America, arranged in their proper genera and in the order given
in the check list of the American Ornithologists' Union, 1895; with the
range of species and subspecies as defined by the same authority or by
Bendire's "Life Histories of North American Birds."
1. CAMPEPHILUS PRINCIPALIS, _Ivory-billed Woodpecker_.
Glossy black except _white secondaries_ (very conspicuous) and
white stripe from beneath ear down neck and shoulders; white
nasal tufts; _bill white_. Both sexes crested; [M]
with scarlet occipital crest, [F] with crest
black. Iris yellow. 20 inches.
Cypress swamps of Gulf States, locally distributed.
The largest, shyest, and rarest of our woodpeckers.
2. DRYOBATES VILLOSUS, _Hairy Woodpecker_.
Black and white. Upper parts glossy black with a broad _white
stripe_ down the back; wings thickly spotted with white; under
parts white; three outer pairs of tail feathers white; two white
and two black stripes on sides of head; nasal tufts brownish
white. [M] with scarlet occipital patch. 9-10
inches.
Eastern United States except South Atlantic and Gulf
States, with the following subspecies, all the races being
resident the year round, and breeding in most places
where they are found:--
a. _D. v. leucomelas_, _Northern Hairy Woodpecker_. 10-11 inches.
Larger, whiter.
British America.
b. _D. v. audubonii_, _Southern Hairy Woodpecker_. 8-8.5 inches.
Smaller, more dingy white.
South Atlantic and Gulf States.
c. _D. v. harrisii_, _Harris's Woodpecker_. 9-10 inches.
Upper parts with less white, few wing spots, under parts
soiled white or smoky brown; larger than next.
Northwest coast, northern California to Alaska.
d. _D. v. hyloscopus_, _Cabanis's Woodpecker_. 8.5-9.5 inches.
White stripe down back very wide; purer white below than
_harrisii_; fewer wing spots than _leucomelas_ and _villosus_.
Western United States, except northwest coast, east to
the Rocky Mountains.
e. _D. v. monticola_, _Rocky Mountain Woodpecker_. 10-11 inches.
Larger; more white spots near bend of wing and secondaries
than _hyloscopus_, fewer than _villosus_; pure white below.
Rocky Mountains west to Uintah Mountains, Utah.
3. DRYOBATES PUBESCENS, _Southern Downy Woodpecker_.
Black and white; broad _white stripe_ down back; wings thickly
spotted with white; under parts white. [M] with
scarlet occipital patch. A miniature Hairy Woodpecker, differing
only in having _four_ outer pairs of tail feathers more or less
white and the _outermost barred_. 6.5 inches. Like the Hairy
Woodpecker, the Downy and its subspecies are resident and breed
wherever they occur.
South Atlantic and Gulf States.
a. _D. p. gairdnerii_, _Gairdner's Woodpecker_. 6.75 inches.
Bears same relation to Downy that Harris's does to Hairy
Woodpecker; under parts smoky white; wings spots few.
Pacific coast north to about lat. 55°.
b. _D. p. oreoecus_, _Batchelder's Woodpecker_. 7.5 inches.
Under parts pure white; under tail coverts unspotted;
fewer wing spots than _medianus_ and _pubescens_.
Rocky Mountain region of United States.
c. _D. p. medianus_, _Downy Woodpecker_. 7 inches.
The larger, whiter form seen in New England and the
Northern States.
d. _D. p. nelsoni_, _Nelson's Downy Woodpecker_.
Whiter, larger, with fewer black bars on outer tail
feathers.
Alaska and region north of 55°.
4. DRYOBATES BOREALIS, _Red-cockaded Woodpecker_.
Upper parts black _barred_ with white, under parts dingy white;
sides streaked and spotted with black; wings spotted with white;
outer tail feathers barred; nasal tufts and _large ear patch
white_; stripe of black down side of neck. [M] with
a tiny tuft of scarlet feathers on each side of head. 7.5-8.5
inches.
Pine woods of southeastern United States, from Tennessee
southwest to eastern Texas and the Indian Territory;
casual north to Pennsylvania.
5. DRYOBATES SCALARIS BAIRDI, _Texan Woodpecker_, _Ladder-backed
Woodpecker_.
Upper parts barred with black and white on back, wings,
and outer tail feathers; sides of head striped; forehead,
nasal feathers, and under parts _smoky gray_, brownest on
belly; _crown speckled with white or red_; [M]
with nape crimson. 7-7.5 inches.
Southern border of United States, Texas to California,
north to southwestern Utah and southern Nevada; generally
resident.
a. _D. s. lucasanus_, _St. Lucas Woodpecker_. Larger.
Lower California, north to 34° in Colorado desert.
These are both subspecies of a Mexican species not occurring
within our limits.
6. DRYOBATES NUTTALLII, _Nuttall's Woodpecker_.
Upper parts barred with black and white; under parts and
_outer tail feathers white_ or dingy white; nasal tufts white;
_forehead and crown black sprinkled with white_. [M]
with red on occiput and nape. 7-7.5 inches.
Southern Oregon and California west of Sierra Nevada
and Cascade Ranges; most common in the oak belt of
the foothills.
Easily distinguished from Downy Woodpecker by being
barred on the back, instead of striped.
7. DRYOBATES ARIZONÆ, _Arizona Woodpecker_.
_Upper parts plain brown, not spotted nor streaked_; primaries
dotted with fine white dots; outer tail feathers barred;
under parts white, _thickly spotted_ (except throat), _with large,
round, brown spots_. [M] with red occipital band.
7.5-8.5 inches.
Southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico; among
oaks of the foothills from 4000 to 7000 feet elevation.
8. XENOPICUS ALBOLARVATUS, _White-headed Woodpecker_.
Glossy black all over, except showy white patch on primaries,
and _head and throat pure white_ (forehead and crown
sometimes grayish). [M] with broad occipital band of
scarlet. 9 inches. "Iris pinkish red" (Bendire).
Mountains of Pacific coast, east to western Nevada and
western Idaho, usually in the pine and fir forests above
4000 feet altitude.
9. PICOIDES ARCTICUS, _Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker_.
_Glossy black above, unmarked_ except by fine white spots on
primaries; under parts grayish white, sides thickly barred
black and white; three outer pairs of tail feathers white,
sides of throat with broad _white stripe_. [M] with
_large crown patch of deep yellow_. 9.5 inches.
British America, south into the northern tier of States
and into the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Lake Tahoe.
Most commonly seen in the track of forest fires, where it
is usually abundant for about two years; rare outside of the
extensive soft wood tracts, and usually found singly or in
pairs except when on burnt land. I have found this species
far more common than the next, and the best mark in life
to be the white _stripe_ on the neck, in distinction from the
white _line_ of _P. americanus_.
10. PICOIDES AMERICANUS, _American Three-toed Woodpecker_.
Very similar to preceding species, but with narrow bars of white
forming an _interrupted stripe down the back_; head thickly
sprinkled with white in both sexes and a white line on nape or
just below; a _white line_, too narrow to be called a stripe,
down side of throat.[M] with _crown bright yellow_.
9 inches. Same range in the East as last; replaced in West by
following subspecies:--
a. _P. a. alascensis_, _Alaskan Three-toed Woodpecker_.
Smaller; more white; nape very white; more white on top
of head.
Alaska, south to 48°. (Mt. Baker, Washington).
b. _P. a. dorsalis_, _Alpine Three-toed Woodpecker_.
More white on back and head than _P. americanus_, less than
_alascensis_; but continuous, not barred. "Iris dark cherry-red"
(Mearns).
Rocky Mountain region, south to New Mexico and Arizona.
11. SPHYRAPICUS VARIUS, _Yellow-bellied Sapsucker_.
Under parts whitish or pale sulphur yellow; upper parts black,
mottled with pure or yellowish white; _rump white_; wings
spotted, and with conspicuous white coverts; tail black with
_outer webs of outer feathers_ and _inner webs of middle
feathers light colored_; sides streaked; breast with a _broad
black patch_ extending in a "chin-strap" to the corners of the
mouth; sides of the head striped. Occiput black, nape white.
[M] with forehead, crown, chin, and throat crimson;
[F] usually with crown crimson, forehead black,
and throat white, back more brownish; [F]
sometimes, and young always, with crown blackish. 7.5-8.5
inches.
Colors vary much with age, sex, and season; the wing bar
and yellowish tinge are good marks for all plumages; the
rump and breast patch for adult birds.
Eastern North America, breeding from Massachusetts
northward, migrating in winter to the Southern States.
a. _S. v. nuchalis_, _Red-naped Sapsucker_.
Similar, but an additional red stripe on nape, and the black
chin-strap replaced by crimson. 8-8.5 inches.
Rocky Mountains to Coast Range, replacing the above in
the mountains; usually breeding at from 5000 to 10,000
feet elevation.
12. SPHYRAPICUS RUBER, _Red-breasted Sapsucker_.
Body and under parts similar to _S. varius_, but back much
less variegated with white. No black on breast, no white
stripe through eyes. Nasal tufts brownish instead of white.
_Head_, _neck_, and _breast uniform crimson_. _Sexes alike._ Young
with crimson replaced by gray or "claret brown" (Bendire).
8.5-9 inches.
Pacific coast, Sierra Nevada, and on both sides of Cascade
Mountains; a summer resident only north of northern
California.
At first sight the Red-breasted Sapsucker might be mistaken
for the Red-headed Woodpecker, but the two birds
do not inhabit the same country.
13. SPHYRAPICUS THYROIDEUS, _Williamson's Sapsucker_.
Sexes totally dissimilar except in having a white rump and
yellow under parts. _Male, glossy black all over except_
conspicuous _white rump_ and _white wing coverts_, two white
stripes on sides of head, white nasal tufts, white spots on
primaries; sides and tail coverts mottled; a stripe of scarlet
down middle of throat and _brilliant yellow under parts_.
_Female, light brown_; head clear brown; body, wings, and tail
closely _barred_ with black and white; no white wing coverts;
rarely a red throat like male; usually but not always a large
black patch on breast, and always a _yellow belly_ and _white
rump_. Young males lack the red on the throat and usually the
yellow on the belly; the black is dull, and the throat a dingy
white. Young females lack the yellow on the belly and the black
on breast, and are dull-colored and indistinctly marked. 9-9.5
inches.
Rocky Mountain region, west to Sierra Nevada, Cascades
and northern Coast Ranges, breeding at from 5000
to 9000 feet elevation. The handsomest of our woodpeckers.
14. CEOPHLOEUS PILEATUS, _Pileated Woodpecker, Logcock_.
Body blackish slate; wings with a large white patch conspicuous
only when flying; throat white; a white stripe
across cheek and down neck; jaw-stripe scarlet in male,
blackish in female; both sexes with scarlet crest, but in the
male the whole top of head (which is slaty black in female)
equally brilliant. This red cap gives the bird the name of
_pileated_. Iris yellow. 17 inches.
Wooded regions of Southern States, Florida to North
Carolina, very rarely near settlements, but far more common
than the following subspecies of the North and
West.
a. _C. p. abieticola_, _Northern Pileated Woodpecker_.
Larger; more extensive white markings; the black grayer
or browner.
From Virginia northward to 63° in the East, and in the
West among the Rocky Mountains, north of Colorado, to
the northwest coast; a shy woodland bird to be looked
for only in the primitive evergreen forests, though sometimes
occurring in any heavy timber and, in New England,
upon the higher well-wooded mountains. The
largest of the northern woodpeckers; resident.
15. _Melanerpes erythrocephalus_, _Red-headed Woodpecker_.
Wings, tail, and upper parts glossy blue-black; rump, exposed
secondaries, and under parts from breast downward
pure white; _head_, _neck_, and _breast crimson._ _Sexes alike._
Young with red and black wholly or partly replaced by
grayish brown; can be recognized by white markings. 9.5
inches.
United States, west to Rocky Mountains; rare east of
Hudson River, but ordinarily breeding wherever found;
in winter usually migratory from its northern limits, the
migration depending principally upon the food supply
and depth of snow.
16. MELANERPES FORMICIVORUS, _Ant-eating Woodpecker_.
Upper parts, wings, and tail glossy greenish black; _rump_
and lower parts _white_; white patch on primaries, conspicuous
in flight; upper throat and line about the bill dull
black; _forehead_ with _wide white band_; lower _throat sulphur
yellow_; breast and sides thickly streaked with black and
white. [M] with crown and occiput crimson;
[F] with crown black, occiput crimson.
Iris white. 7-9 inches.
Mexico; western Texas.
a. _M. f. angustifrons_, _Narrow-fronted Woodpecker_.
Similar, but with a _narrow band of white_ across the _forehead_;
breast and sides not so thickly streaked.
Lower California, never occurring within the borders of
the United States.
b. _M. f. bairdi_, _Californian Woodpecker_, _El Carpintero_.
Similar to _M. formicivorus_, but the breast black, little
streaked with white except along the sides; yellow of throat
paler, or replaced by white. Iris white. Larger, 7.5-9.5
inches.
Pacific coast, north into Oregon to 44°, east to southern
New Mexico and Texas in the south and to the eastern
slopes of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountains in
the north, but more abundant, on the western than on the
eastern slopes of these mountains.
17. MELANERPES TORQUATUS, _Lewis's Woodpecker_.
Upper parts, wings, and tail glossy greenish black; under
parts _pinkish red_; chest and _collar round hind neck hoary
gray_; crown and sides of head black; forehead, cheeks, and
chin crimson. _Sexes alike._ Young with pink replaced by
grayish. 10.5-11.5 inches.
Pacific coast, east to Black Hills and Rocky Mountains
between Arizona and 49th parallel; casual still farther
east; migratory in its northern ranges; a silent, heavy
flying bird, different in habits and appearance from the
other woodpeckers; often seen flycatching.
18. MELANERPES CAROLINUS, _Red-bellied Woodpecker_, _Zebra Bird_.
Back and wings black, _barred with white_; under and upper
tail coverts, middle and outer tail feathers, white varied with
black; head and under parts ashy; _belly tinged with reddish_.
[M] with whole top of head and nape bright red;
[F] with forehead and nape red, crown gray. 9-10
inches.
Eastern and Southern States between the Hudson River
and the Rocky Mountains, north to southern New York,
Ohio, southern Michigan, etc.; migratory in its northern
ranges.
19. MELANERPES AURIFRONS, _Golden-fronted Woodpecker_.
Back and wings barred with black and white; rump white; entire
under parts brownish white, unspotted (except under tail
coverts); primaries unspotted, except at tip; tail black with
slightly barred outer feathers; _belly yellowish; forehead and
hind neck orange in both sexes_. [M] with _crown
red_ set in a larger patch of clear gray; [F]
with crown clear gray. 9.5 inches.
Central and southern Texas, north to about 33°; breeds
wherever found.
20. MELANERPES UROPYGIALIS, _Gila Woodpecker_.
Back and wings barred with black and white; _head and
lower parts smoky brown_; rump black and white; tail barred
on inner and outer feathers; primaries unspotted; belly yellow
(not conspicuous). [M] with red crown surrounded by
brownish; "iris red" (Hayden). 9 inches.
Southwestern New Mexico and Arizona to southeastern
California, usually above 2000 feet altitude; its distribution
depending principally upon the giant cactus.
21. COLAPTES AURATUS, _Flicker_, _Yellow-hammer_, _High-hole_,
_Clape_.
Back and wings (except primaries) brownish gray, barred with
black; under parts pale vinaceous spotted with black spots from
breast downward; _rump white; tail and wings golden yellow
beneath_, dark above, showing the yellow shafts; tail feathers
with black tips below; top of head ashy gray, sides of head and
throat vinaceous; a broad _black crescent_ across breast, a
bright scarlet one on nape. [M] _with black jaw
patches_; [F] without them. 12 inches.
South Atlantic and Gulf region, north to North Carolina.
a. _C. a. luteus_, _Northern Flicker_.
Larger; paler; black bars above narrower; less black and
white below.
North from North Carolina and west to the Rocky Mountains;
casual farther west; migratory from its northern
ranges.
22. COLAPTES CAFER, _Red-shafted Flicker_.
Color pattern similar to above with the following differences:
_wings and tail red beneath_ instead of yellow; throat ashy
gray; usually no red on occiput (though some specimens show a
narrow crescent). [M] _with red jaw patches_.
12.5-14 inches.
Rocky Mountain region west to Pacific coast from
Mexico to British Columbia, except northwest coast
region of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia,
and occasionally east to Kansas and Nebraska; resident
except in the more northern portions of its range.
a. _C. c. saturatior_, _Northwestern Flicker_.
Darker; smaller; narrower breast crescent.
Northwest coast, replacing the above, from which it cannot
be separated in life.
23. COLAPTES CHRYSOIDES, _Gilded Flicker_; _Cactus Flicker_.
Color pattern same as _C. auratus_, but throat gray; top of head
brown; _occiput without band_; tail band broader and yellow
paler than in _C. auratus_. [M] with _jaw patches
bright red_; "iris blood red" (Hayden).
Central and southern Arizona and Lower California.
a. _C. c. brunescens_, _Brown Flicker_.
A curious subspecies of the last, smaller, with larger,
more numerous spots and a smoky brown cast of plumage;
black tail band very wide; jaw patches red; wings and tail
yellow beneath.
Lower (not southern) California; casual only in southern
California; in Arizona to 35°.
24. COLAPTES RUFIPILEUS, _Guadalupe Island Flicker_.
Coloration like _C. cafer_, crown decidedly brown; crescent
on nape wanting; jaw patches red; wings and tail _red_ beneath.
Guadalupe Island off the coast of Lower California.
INDEX
Aard-vark, 104.
Acorns, eaten by woodpeckers, 46, 51, 57, 58, 59.
Acquired habits, 61-66.
Adaptations of woodpeckers to environment,104-109.
Ant-bear, 104, 106.
Ants, as food for woodpeckers, 3, 30, 63, 105, 106.
Argument from design, 110.
Bear, black, 107.
Beechnuts, as food for woodpeckers, 57, 58, 59.
Beetles, as food for woodpeckers, 3, 11, 63.
Bill of woodpeckers as a tool, 68-76.
Borers, 3, 10, 11, 29, 30, 36.
Burroughs, John, quoted, 17.
Cacti, woodpeckers nesting in, 20.
Cannibalism among woodpeckers, 64.
Carpenter, the. _See_ California woodpecker.
Carpintero, El. _See_ California woodpecker.
Caterpillars, as food for woodpeckers, 10, 11, 29, 63.
Cecropia chrysalids, eaten by woodpeckers, 9.
Chestnuts, eaten by woodpeckers, 59.
Chickadee, 16, 21, 25, 30, 32, 74.
Chipmunks, hoarding food, 60.
Clape. _See_ Flicker.
Creeper, brown, 5, 81, 87, 88.
Crossbills, eating salted food, 31.
Crow, hoarding habit, 60; 74.
Cuckoo, ground, 82.
Cuckoos, yoke-toed, 5, 82.
Drumming of yellow-bellied sapsucker, 16, 17.
Evolution, 109, 112.
Feeding young, how the flicker does it, 24, 25.
Fence-posts used by woodpeckers, 48, 56, 58.
Finch, purple, 39.
Finches, 74.
Fish-spears, 12, 13.
Flicker, 6, 7, 15, 18, 20, 23-26, 73, 74, 82, 88, 89, 95, 97-99,
101, 103, 106, 125.
brown, 126.
cactus, 126.
gilded, 126.
Guadalupe Island, 127.
northern, 126.
northwestern, 126.
red-shafted, 126.
Flycatching habits of woodpeckers, 7, 56, 106, 124.
Foot, of a four-toed woodpecker figured, 77.
of a three-toed woodpecker figured, 80.
discussed as a tool, 77-85.
Grasshoppers, as food for woodpeckers, 3, 56, 63.
Grosbeaks, pine, 39.
Grouse, ruffed, 14, 15.
Grouse, sharp-tailed, 15.
Hawk, sparrow, 21.
High-hole. _See_ Flicker.
Hoarding habits, 62, 63.
Hummingbird, Anna's, 27.
Hummingbirds, 25, 103.
Hyoid bones, 100-103.
Jay, blue, hoarding habit, 53, 60.
Kinglets, 5.
Lightning rods attracting woodpeckers, 18.
Logcock. _See_ Woodpecker, pileated.
Maple, rock and red, sugar made from, 36.
Maize, eaten by English sparrows, 62, 65.
Mandibles of woodpeckers, 13, 101.
Martin, sand, 20.
Mice, hoarding habit, 60.
Migration, dependent upon food supply, 63.
Mountain-ash trees, sought by woodpeckers, 38.
Nesting of woodpeckers, 20-23.
Nests, in unusual places, 20.
North America, ornithologically defined, 114.
Nuthatches, 5, 21, 30, 81.
Oaks, used by Californian woodpecker for storing nuts, 48, 49.
Oranges, eaten by woodpeckers, 65, 66.
Owls, 15, 21, 80.
Pangolin, as an ant-eater, 104.
Parrot, 13, 82.
Parroquet, Carolina, 5.
Pigeon, domestic, 27.
Pines, acorns stored in, 49.
"Ploughshare," anchylosed vertebræ of tail, 86.
Ravens, 74.
Reason in woodpeckers' hoarding, 62.
Red-head. _See_ Woodpecker, red-headed.
Robins, 39.
Sap, not used as an insect-lure, 41.
how its loss harms the tree, 44, 45.
Sapsucker, orange, 65. _See, also_, Woodpecker, red-bellied.
red-breasted, 122.
red-naped, 121.
Williamson's, 122.
yellow-bellied, 7, 15-17, 33-45, 59, 102, 103, 105, 106.
Skull of woodpecker figured, 101.
Sparrow, English _or_ house, 21, 62, 65.
Spears, 12, 13.
Spruce, acorns stored in, 47, 49, 53.
Squirrels, thievishness of, 23, 53.
Subspecies defined, 114.
Swallow, eaves _or_ cliff, 61, 64, 65.
Swallow, tree, 21.
Swift, chimney, 5, 20, 61, 87, 88.
Tail, shape, 89.
number of rectrices, 95.
experimental demonstration of shape _a priori_, 91.
reason for shape, 98.
Tail-feathers studied, 94-97.
Taste in the woodpeckers, 38, 39.
Telegraph poles resorted to by woodpeckers, 7, 18, 48.
Thumb, of birds, 80.
Tin roofs resorted to by woodpeckers, 17, 55.
Titmouse, crested, 21.
Toes, numbering of, 79, 80.
Tongue, appearance of, 99.
figured, 99.
bones of, 13, 100-103.
Trogons, yoke-toed, 82.
Vanessa butterfly, 16.
Vegetable food of woodpeckers, 3, 31.
Vireos, 30.
Warblers, 30.
Weevils, not the object in storing nuts, 52.
Woodpecker, Alaskan three-toed, 121.
alpine three-toed, 121.
American three-toed, 121.
ant-eating, 123.
arctic three-toed, 120.
Arizona, 120.
Batchelder's, 118.
black-breasted, 6. _See, also_, Williamson's sapsucker.
Cabanis's, 118.
Californian, 46-54, 56, 66.
downy, 6, 17, 21, 28-33, 59, 63, 70, 74, 83, 86, 88, 95, 107,
114, 118.
Gairdner's, 118.
Gila, 55, 125.
golden-fronted, 55, 102, 125.
hairy, 6, 9, 28, 32, 59, 63, 74, 83, 86, 88, 89, 95, 97-99, 107,
114, 117.
Harris's, 118.
ivory-billed, 70, 71, 73, 83, 88, 89, 93, 97, 98, 107, 117.
ladder-backed, 119.
Lewis's, 6, 13, 55, 59, 66, 103, 124.
narrow-fronted, 124.
Nelson's downy, 119.
northern hairy, 118.
northern pileated, 123.
Nuttall's, 119.
pileated, 6, 71, 73, 83, 88, 93, 95, 98, 99, 107, 123.
red-bellied, 6, 55, 65, 124.
red-cockaded, 119.
red-headed, 6, 7, 11, 55-58, 60-64, 105, 123.
Rocky Mountain, 118.
St. Lucas, 119.
southern downy, 118.
southern hairy, 118.
Texan, 119.
three-toed, foot figured, 80.
white-headed, 120.
Woodpeckers, advantages of, as subject for study, 2.
bill as a tool, 69-73.
carpenters or miners, 68.
character of, 7, 8.
coloration of, 5.
coloration of sexes, 6.
covered nostrils, 74, 75.
favorite haunts, 3, 7.
foot, structure and uses, 77.
habit of drumming, 17.
how to recognize the woodpeckers, 4.
inferences from study of bills, 75.
hunting borers, 10, 11.
nesting, 21, 22.
preferred foods, 3, 7.
tail, study of, 86-99.
winter quarters, 22.
wooing, 15.
Yoke-toed feet, 82.
Zebra bird. _See_ Woodpecker, red-bellied.
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass, U. S. A._
* * * * *
Transcribers Notes
Pickaxe and pick-axe both used in the text
Various punctuation and other printing errors corrected
Inconsistent hyphenation of words regularised
Spelling of reëcho (page 16) left intact
Male symbol shown as [M] Female symbol shown as [F]
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