Life histories of North American woodpeckersBent, Arthur Cleveland
Science
Life histories of North American woodpeckers
Bent, Arthur Cleveland
Birds -- North America; Woodpeckers -- North America
On August 29, the writer, accompanied by Mr. Richardson,
made a trip to Lake of the Woods, Klamath County. Just
south of Ashland a few scattered individuals were seen. As
the Cascade summit was approached many were seen in the
open fields and meadows. In the flats near the lake, and
in the open meadows near Rainbow Creek, numbers were found
feeding on the mountain huckleberries. Returning to Ashland
on September 1, huge flocks of these birds could be seen
moving steadily toward the lower Valley. * * *
On September 7, also, the growers in the vicinity of
Medford reported the arrival of the first birds there.
Flocks were present until September 19, when almost every
bird in the area disappeared. A few scattering individuals
were left in various foothill areas, but these left during
November. The areas in which they wintered so abundantly
during the 1924-5 season were totally deserted during the
1925-6 season, and not until spring did they return to this
area.
Herbert Brown (1902) states that Lewis’s woodpeckers appeared in large
numbers, during the fall of 1884, in the Santa Cruz Valley, Ariz., the
first he had seen there for 20 years. He saw the first one on September
28 and ten on the 30th. They were very abundant at times during October
but disappeared at intervals. They were last seen on November 16.
_Winter._--W. E. D. Scott (1886) says of its winter habits in Arizona:
About my house it generally appeared about the 20th of
September, and some years was very abundant. It stays as
late as April 20, and then is not seen again till fall,
though I have seen the species in the pine region above me
late in the spring. In 1884, there was an unprecedented
abundance of the species throughout the entire region under
consideration. They came in countless numbers about the
ranches, both on the San Pedro and near Tucson. Arriving
early in September, they did great injury to the fruit
crops raised in these regions, and I heard much complaint
of them. In the oak woods they were equally abundant,
living almost altogether on acorns, but spending much of
the warmer portion of the day catching insects on the wing,
very much as any of the larger flycatchers do, only that
on leaving the perch of observation or rest, the flight is
much more prolonged than in the flycatchers that I have
seen.
Lewis’s woodpeckers sometimes remain in winter, in small numbers, as
far north as the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. According to
Suckley and Cooper (1860), they are “constant winter residents” near
Fort Dalles on the Columbia River. Of their winter habits, Suckley
writes:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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