426 NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



not stiffened and acuminated, rectrices. A good idea of the habitus of the piculets 

 may be formed from the accompanying plate, which represents, in natural size, 

 Picumnus lepidotus from Guiana. It is brownish gray on the back and abdomen, the 

 rest of the under surface being whitish, squamulated with dusky; nasal tufts whitish; 

 head above black, in the male with red anteriorly, and white pearl spots on the 

 posterior half, while the female lacks the red, the spots dotting the whole head above ; 

 the tail is black and white. The East Indian genus, Sasia, comprises a few three- 

 toed species, the first toe being aborted. In the same region is also found a four- 

 toed form, Vivid, innominate^ which is nearer allied to the Neotropical species. 



The habits of these pygmy woodpeckers are very little known. Burmeister says 

 that their habits are entirely similar to those of our kinglets (Regidus}. Reinhardt, 

 on the other hand, asserts that they differ in no way from the other woodpeckers ; 

 that, like these, they hammer on the trees with their bills, and climb on the trunks 

 and even on the under side of the branches, notwithstanding their soft tails. Prob- 

 ably their habits are most like those of the nuthatches, with which they also agree 

 in size. Euler states that they breed in holes in trees, which they bore themselves, 

 and from two to four glossy white eggs have been found in the nests. 



The Picinas, or woodpeckers proper, are easily distinguished by their stiffened, 

 elastic, pointed, and graduated tail-feathers, which are used as a support in climbing, 

 their ends being pressed against the bark, preventing a slipping backwards. The 

 bill is angular and wedge-shaped, forming a powerful hammer or axe, with which to 

 cut off chips of bark or wood in search of insects, or to dig holes into the wood in 

 order to build nesting-holes. 



The woodpeckers are usually solitary birds, that is, they do not often associate 

 with others of their own kind. Some of the smaller species, however, seem to be 

 fond of the society of nuthatches, chickadees, kinglets, etc., during their rambles through 

 the woods in autumn and winter. During the breeding season some species are 

 known to produce a remarkable whirring sound, the so-called ' drumming,' by rapidly 

 striking a dry branch, which can be heard to a great distance. This seems to be the 

 male's love-song. 



The flight of the woodpeckers is generally powerful, but undulating if kept up for 

 some distance. During their search for food, they proceed through the forests from 

 trunk to trunk, ascending them by starts from the lower part until they reach the top, 

 whence, in a single curve, they descend to the base of the next one. They lay their 

 glossy white eggs in some hole dug by themselves in a more or less decayed tree, and 

 both sexes attend to the incubation. The young ones are more or less like the adults 

 in color, though in many of the most familiar species they are even more highly orna- 

 mented than their parents. Thus in most of our species of the genus Dryobates, the 

 young ones have the whole top of the head red, while in the adult male it usually 

 becomes restricted to the occiput, and disappears altogether in the adult female. In 

 this case the difference in the two sexes can hardly be attributed to 'sexual selection,' 

 for it seems most probable that the original stock from which these species have devel- 

 oped originally had a red head, and the disappearance of this color may therefore 

 be regarded as protective. That it in most cases has also been partly lost by the male 

 is no objection, since he is known to partake in the incubation. 



The Picina? form a very homogeneous group, the structural characters being only 

 slightly varied, and such extravagant ornaments as racket-tails, wattles, excrescences 

 in form of horns, etc., are entirely unknown. The only sort of ornamental plumes are 



