About July 1 the young birds begin to make their appearance so like the adults in general appearance that it is difficult to distinguish between them. The young of both sexes usually have the entire crown red, as in the adult male, but of a duller color, more of a brick red; but one young female secured has the red area very limited and coming to a point behind, so as to form a small, triangular shaped patch on the crown. Of seventeen specimens collected in the Huachucas, three show, more or less distinctly, white markings on the outer tail feathers. In one of these, an adult female, the marks consist of indistinct white spots, mostly on the inner web. The other two, juvenile females, have the outer feathers distinctly, though irregularly, barred with white for about half their length. _Food._--The food of this woodpecker is evidently similar to that of other races of the species. Dr. Mearns (1890b) remarks: “Its habit of industriously hoarding food in the bark of pines, and in all sorts of chinks and hollows, is well known. These stores are the source of unending quarrels between this woodpecker and its numerous pilfering enemies; and I have laid its supplies under contribution myself, when short of provisions and lost from the command with which I had been traveling, by filling my saddlebags with half-dried acorns from under the loose bark of a dead pine.” _Behavior._--Mrs. Bailey (1928) says: “An odd habit of the woodpeckers was happened on by Mr. Ligon in the Black Range. At dark, on March 15, 1913, seeing a bird enter a hole about eight feet up in an oak he closed it after it, and in the morning when he returned was surprised to find six birds in the one hole. As the woodpeckers do not nest until the last of May, and then in high dead pines, it was, of course, a night roost.” Ed. S. Steele (1926) tells the following story: I was camping in a pine forest not many miles from Reserve, N. Mex., accompanied by a small English terrier. In front of my tent stood a large dead pine, near the top of which there were a number of holes, evidently the homes of four pairs of Ant-eating Woodpeckers (_Balanosphyra formicivora aculeata_). A gray tassel-eared squirrel came scampering along, and was at once spied by the dog, which gave chase. The squirrel ran up the dead tree mentioned above, to be instantly assailed by the woodpeckers. Their constant cries and their sharp bills made things so uncomfortable for the squirrel that it ran down the tree to within a few feet of the dog, who sent him scampering to the top again with his eight antagonists constantly flaying him.