. Birds of America;. Birds -- North America. WOODPECKERS 147 The White-headed Woodpecker is a typical bird of the yellow pine timber, ranging from the mountains of southern British Columbia through Oregon and Idaho and cs])i'cially along the east- ern slopes of the Cascades and Sierra Nevadas. The bird gets its food from insects in the bark of the pine, not so much by boring into the tree as by prying off the scales or layers of the bark. many short stubs of small broken branches pro- jecting an inch or two from the main trunk. When the sun is shining, these projections are lighted up in such
. Birds of America;. Birds -- North America. WOODPECKERS 147 The White-headed Woodpecker is a typical bird of the yellow pine timber, ranging from the mountains of southern British Columbia through Oregon and Idaho and cs])i'cially along the east- ern slopes of the Cascades and Sierra Nevadas. The bird gets its food from insects in the bark of the pine, not so much by boring into the tree as by prying off the scales or layers of the bark. many short stubs of small broken branches pro- jecting an inch or two from the main trunk. When the sun is shining, these projections are lighted up in such a manner as to appear quite white at a little distance, and they often cast a shadow resembling the black body of the bird. In winter when a little snow has lodged on these stubs, the resemblance is even greater, and almost. Drawing by R. I. Brasher WHITE-HEADED WOODPECKER (3 nat. size) A quiet worker among the yellow pine timber It is a quiet worker and eats a great number of larvae that tunnel into the bark and the other insects that crawl under the scales of the bark for shelter in winter. Dr. James C. Merrill says : " One would think- that the peculiar coloration of the White-headed Woodpecker would make it very conspicuous and its detection an easy matter, but this is by no means the case, at least about Fort Klamath. On most of the pines in this vicinity there are Vol. II — II daily I was misled by this deceptive appearance, either mistaking a stub for a bird or the ; Mrs. Florence Merriam Bailey records much the same experience with this bird. " Impossible as it would seem at first sight, I have found that the snow-white head often serves the bird as a disguise. It is the disguise of color pattern, for the black body seen against a tree trunk becomes one of the black streaks or shadows of the bark, and the white head is cut off as a detached white. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally e
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookidbirdsofameri, bookyear1923
