Major Bendire (1895) remarks: “The California woodpecker is by far the most social representative of this family found within the United States, and it is no unusual occurrence to see half a dozen or more in a single tree. It is also a well-disposed bird, and seldom quarrels or fights with its own kind or with smaller species; but it most emphatically resents the thieving propensities of the different jays, magpies, and squirrels, when caught trespassing on its winter stores, attacking these intruders with such vigor and persistency that they are compelled to vacate the premises in a hurry.” According to some other observers, its behavior toward other species is not always as friendly as it might be. M. P. Skinner writes to me: “Once I found a California woodpecker and a California jay peaceably perched in the top of a dead cottonwood. But at other times I have noted much fighting between these woodpeckers and the jays, with the woodpeckers apparently able to hold their own. On May 1, 1933, at old Fort Tejon, I saw a California woodpecker make a vicious dive at a plain titmouse that was clinging to the bark on the trunk of an oak. On May 31 I saw one make a dive at an Arkansas kingbird on a fence and drive it away. In May 1933 I found a pair of house finches that had attempted to nest in a cavity high up in a dead stub of a black oak. When I appeared, I found a California woodpecker throwing out the straws and other nest material. The two finches were only a foot or two distant, but they made no attempt to save their home, although it is probable that they were scolding. Old acorn stores in the same stub indicated that some woodpecker had an earlier claim to that stub than the finches had.” Howard W. Wright (1908) says: January 18, while collecting at Newhall, California, I wounded a Lewis woodpecker. The bird was able to fly to another tree, and I noticed that some California woodpeckers in a nearby tree became very much excited. As the Lewis woodpecker lit on the tree trunk four California woodpeckers attacked him evidently with the intent of driving him off. The Lewis started for another tree but a California flew at him from in front, and they both fell in the struggle that ensued. At this the other California woodpeckers, which were joined by a few more, set up a violent chattering and when I ran up, to my amazement I found that the Lewis had hold of the California by the skull, two of its claws entering the latter’s eyes and the other two entering the skull in front and behind. The Lewis woodpecker was dead and the California so nearly so that it died while I was removing the former’s claws.