Lewis Woodpecker in Eastern Oklahoma
Lewis Woodpecker in Eastern Oklahoma
On December 24, 1922, while on the golf course of the Oakhurst Country Club, eight miles southwest of Tulsa, Oklahoma, I noticed a large black woodpecker flying out over one of the fairways and returning to a large oak after each flight. I at once determined that it was a Lewis Woodpecker (Asyndesmus lewisi) and mentally put it down as a new migrant for my local list. By the time I had made a complete circuit of the course and was near the same spot again, the occurrence of the bird had been given more thought and a decision reached that it was of more than local importance. So I delayed the game a little and got under the favorite observation tree, about 25 feet from the bird itself. The peculiar reddish underparts. the gray collar, the black wings and upper parts, and the comparatively larger size than that of the Red-headed Woodpeckers with which it was loosely associating rendered identificaticn absolutely certain-the species being one with which I am familiar through both observing and collecting them in California. It was quite out of the question to obtain a gun and collect this bird on the crowded golf course that day.
This record is not the easternmost for the species, because A. Wetmore has recorded the bird from near Lawrence, Kansas (Condor, XI, p. 2081) which station is some forty minutes of longitude more easterly than my station, but the occurrence is a new one for eastern Oklahoma.
J. R. Pemberton
Tulsa, Oklahoma, January 1, 1923
