o
himself.

[Sidenote: Feeding Habits.]

It would be a stingy man, indeed, who would begrudge the Woodpeckers
their acorns and beechnuts. While the leaves are still green on the
trees, the Redheads discover the beechnuts and go to work. "It is a
truly beautiful sight," Dr. Merriam says, "to watch these magnificent
birds creeping about after the manner of Warblers, among the small
branches and twigs, which bend low with their weight, while picking and
husking the tender nuts."

The nuts are not always eaten on the spot, for, like their famous
California cousins, the Redheads store up food for winter use. All sorts
of odd nooks and crannies serve the Redheads for storehouses--knot-holes,
pockets under patches of raised bark, cracks between shingles and fences,
and even railroad ties. Sometimes, instead of nuts, grasshoppers and other
eatables are put away in storage. The wise birds at times make real caches,
concealing their stores by hammering down pieces of wood or bark over them.

Beechnuts are such a large part of the fall and winter food of the
Redheads in some localities, that, like the gray squirrels, the birds
are common in good beechnut winters and absent in others. Cold and snow
do not trouble them, if they have plenty to eat, for, as Major Bendire
says, many of them "winter along our northern border, in certain years,
when they can find an abundant supply of food." In fact, in the greater
part of the eastern states the Redhead is "a rather regular resident,"
but in the western part of its range "It appears to migrate pretty
regularly," so that it is rare to see one "North of latitude 40 deg., in
winter." The western boundary of the Redhead's range is the Rocky
Mountains, but east of the mountains it breeds from Manitoba and
northern New York south to the Gulf of Mexico; though it is a rare bird
in eastern New England.

[Sidenote: Migration.]

In sections where this erratic Woodpecker migrates, it leaves its
nesting-grounds early in October, and returns the latter part of April
or the beginning of May. Before too much taken up with the serious
business of life, the Redhead goes gaily about, as Major Bendire says,
"frolicking and playing hide-and-seek with its mate, and when not so
engaged, amusing itself by drumming on some resonant dead limb, or on
the roof and sides of houses, barns, etc." For though, like other
drummers, the Woodpeckers are not found in the front ranks of the
orchestra, they beat a ro