Red-Headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes Erythrocephalus) Woodpecker Family
Called also: TRI-COLOR, RED-HEAD

Length -- 8.50 to 9.75 inches. An inch or less smaller than the robin. Male and Female -- Head, neck, and throat crimson; breast and underneath white; back black and white; wings and tail blue black, with broad white band on wings conspicuous in flight. Range -- United States, east of Rocky Mountains and north to Manitoba. Migrations -- Abundant but irregular migrant. Most commonly seen in Autumn, and rarely resident.

In thinly populated sections, where there are few guns about, this is still one of the commonest as it is perhaps the most conspicuous member of the woodpecker family, but its striking glossy black-and-white body and its still more striking crimson head, flattened out against the side of a tree like a target, where it is feeding, have made it all too tempting a mark for the rifles of the sportsmen and the sling-shots of small boys. As if sufficient attention were not attracted to it by its plumage, it must needs keep up a noisy, guttural rattle, ker-r-ruck, ker-r-ruck, very like a tree-toad's call, and flit about among the trees with the restlessness of a fly-catcher. Yet, in spite of these invitations for a shot to the passing gunner, it still multiplies in districts where nuts abound, being "more common than the robin" about Washington, says John Burroughs.