_Plumages._--Like other woodpeckers, the young are hatched naked and blind, but the juvenal plumage is acquired before the young leave the nest. In this the young male closely resembles the adult female, but the colors are duller, the barring is less distinct, and the white bars are suffused with brownish white; there are indistinct dusky shaft streaks on the chest and little or no red on the abdomen, which, if present, is more orange or yellowish; there is no clear red on the head, but the gray crown is sometimes suffused centrally with dark red mixed with the gray; the hind neck is often suffused with pinkish or yellowish. The juvenal female is similar to the young male, but the top of the head is darker gray, or dusky, and there is less reddish or yellowish suffusion anywhere. The juvenal plumage is apparently worn through the first fall; I have seen it as late as December 20, but Forbush (1927) says that it is shed between August and October. In the first winter plumage, there is an advance toward maturity, young males acquiring more red on the crown and occiput, and young females on the latter. There is probably a more or less continuous molt during winter, or a partial prenuptial molt in early spring, by which young birds become practically indistinguishable from adults. Adults have a complete postnuptial molt late in summer and early in fall. _Food._--Bendire (1895) says: Its food consists of about equal proportions of animal and vegetable matter, and it feeds considerably on the ground. Insects, like beetles, ants, grasshoppers, different species of flies, and larvae are eaten by them, as well as acorns, beechnuts, pine seeds, juniper berries, wild grapes, blackberries, strawberries, pokeberries, palmetto and sour-gum berries, cherries, and apples. In the South it has acquired a liking for the sweet juice of oranges and feeds to some extent on them; but as it always returns to the same one, until this ceases to yield any more juice, the damage done in this is slight. It has also been observed drinking the sweet sap from the troughs in sugar camps. The injury it commits by the little fruit it eats during the season is fully atoned for by the numerous insects and their larvae which it destroys at the same time, and I therefore consider this handsome Woodpecker fully worthy of protection.