Life histories of North American woodpeckersBent, Arthur Cleveland
Science
Life histories of North American woodpeckers
Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Birds -- North America; Woodpeckers -- North America
He seldom gave more than three or four pecks at a time, and
would then swing his head round to one side or the other,
sometimes raising his scarlet crest. He seldom threw back
his head without tossing a chip back of him, and when I
examined his work after he had left, later in the day, I
found some chips near the stub, which were three inches
long and one inch wide. Others half this size had been
thrown out on the snow a distance of four feet. The hole
was on the west side and measured six inches across and ten
inches long, and extended to a depth of six inches toward
the heart of the stub. There was another hole six inches
square on the south side. The bird seemed to chisel out a
section three inches wide across the hole and then move
down and cut out another section. The two holes were dug in
about two hours.
Of summertime feeding Ora W. Knight (1908) says: “Except the Flicker
this is the only species of Woodpecker I have observed feeding on the
ground, but this species likes to tear open the ant hills found in open
places in the woods and feed on the ants and their larvæ.” He also says
that in the fall these birds eat “dogwood berries, choke and black
cherries and other wild fruits and berries, also beechnuts and acorns
for which it has a decided fondness.”
Dr. Sutton (1930) says:
The food of this species in Pennsylvania, according to
official examination of four stomachs, is largely of
ants. The stomach and crop of a male specimen weighing
nine ounces, collected at Northumberland, Northumberland
County, on November 10, 1928, contained 469 carpenter
ants (_Camponotus herculaneus_), most of them so recently
swallowed as to permit of counting them easily. The stomach
of a female taken at Aitch, Huntingdon County, on November
30, 1928, contained the remains of at least 153 carpenter
ants, one small carabid beetle, the legs of a small bug
(apparently a squash-bug), and 17 wild grapes, swallowed
whole.
F. E. L. Beal (1911) gave the results of examination of the contents of
80 stomachs collected far and wide throughout the range of the species.
Animal food amounted to 72.88 percent; vegetable, 27.12 percent.
Beetles made up 22.01 percent of the total, and ants 39.91 percent.
As many as 2,600 ants were counted in a single stomach. The ants were
“mostly of the larger species that live in decaying timber.” Ants and
beetles together made up the bulk of the animal food (61.92 percent).
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