Summarizing his first paper, he makes the following statements: As to hole drilling: While the holes are made expressly for the reception of acorns, many holes are probably made which are never used, holes are made at seasons of the year when there are no acorns to store, and large numbers of perfectly serviceable holes seem to be abandoned even in localities where both birds and acorns are abundant, and new holes are being made. As to the storing business itself: While this is of distinct service to the food necessities of the woodpeckers, the instinct sometimes goes wrong to the extent of storing pebbles instead of acorns, thus defeating entirely the purpose of the instinct. Again, large numbers of acorns are sometimes stored, the use of which is so long delayed that the acorns become wholly or largely unfit for food, and this in places where the bird population seems normal. Finally, acorns are sometimes stored in such fashion as to make them easy prey for marauding rodents, when with some definite foresight and a little more work such exposure could easily be largely avoided. In his second paper (1922), after further observations, he states[1]: My previous surmise that the birds are more interested in the grubs contained in the acorns than in the acorn meats has not been substantiated. What I could make out while in camp among them, by watching them gather and eat their breakfasts, was to the effect that good uninhabited acorns were chiefly used. Again and again birds were seen to pick nuts from the top-most branches of the black oak, fly with them in their beaks to some approximately horizontal surface of a large limb on a pine or another oak, make the surface aid them somehow (I never could see exactly how, as the “breakfast tables” were, of course, all on the upper surfaces of the limbs, and too high for my vision) in breaking and tearing open the nuts. Apparently cracks and chinks in the table top serve as holders for the acorns while they are being opened and eaten. This is indicated by the fact that dead and partly decayed trees or parts of trees were mostly used. I saw no indication of the feet being used in handling the nuts. The litter on the ground under the dining trees, consisting of shell fragments and lost bits of meat, indicated grubless nuts almost entirely. This result as to the use of mast is in agreement with Beal’s examination of the stomach contents of our woodpecker.