In this area there can be no question of the objectionable status of the Lewis woodpecker. If the birds would consume each fruit injured, there would be little complaint of their taking the quantity which probably would satisfy them. They are restless and energetic, however, and always attacking fresh fruit, which with one stroke of the bill is ruined for commercial use. If one allows only one bite to each fruit, some of the stomachs studied would have contained the samples of as high as two bushels of fruit. In the restricted areas mentioned the Lewis woodpecker is a pest. _Behavior._--Lewis’s woodpecker seldom indulges in the undulating flight so common to other woodpeckers, though it sometimes swings in a long curve in a short flight from tree to tree. Its ordinary, traveling flight is quite unlike the flight of other members of the family; it is strong, direct, and rather slow, with steady strokes of its long, broad wings. At first glance one would hardly recognize it as a woodpecker, for its flight and its appearance are more suggestive of a crow, a Clarke’s nutcracker, or a jay. But it is far from clumsy in the air, and its skill in catching insects on the wing demonstrates is mastery of the air in flight. It also indulges in some rather remarkable aerial evolutions, which one would hardly expect from a member of the woodpecker family. On this subject, Robert Ridgway (1877) writes: In its general habits and manners this beautiful species resembles quite closely the eastern Red-headed Woodpecker (_M. erythrocephalus_), being quite as lively and of an equally playful disposition. Some of its actions, however, are very curious, the most remarkable of them being a certain elevated flight, performed in a peculiar floating manner, its progress apparently laborious, as if struggling against the wind, or uncertain, like a bird which had lost its course and become confused. At such a time it presents the appearance of a Crow high in the air, while the manner of its flight is strikingly similar to that of Clarke’s Nutcracker (_Picicorvus columbianus_). * * * After performing these evolutions to its satisfaction, it descends in gradually contracting circles, often to the tree from which it started.