6 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



group, these habits are nevertheless more highly developed and more 

 universal in the Woodpeckers than in any other birds. The true 

 Woodpeckers (Picinse) are all truly scansorial, and in clinging to the 

 side of a tree or branch or ascending the same support themselves to 

 a great extent by using the rigid tail as a prop. Although to a great 

 extent insectivorous the Woodpeckers also feed to a great extent on 

 fruits (both large and small), or even grain, especially when in the 

 soft or unripe stage. The species of one genus (S phyrapicus) subsist 

 largely on the soft inner bark or cambium and sugary sap of certain 

 trees and often do considerable damage, especially to fruit trees. 

 All other kinds, however, are decidedly beneficial, through their 

 destruction of wood-destroying beetles and their larvae, grasshoppers, 

 and other predaceous insects. 



The eggs of Woodpeckers are, like those of other Picarian birds, 

 invariably immaculate white, usually with a very glossy or polished 

 surface, and are deposited on the chips at the bottom of the excava- 

 tion, no attempt at constructing a true nest being made. In very 

 thinly wooded or treeless countries the few species of Woodpeckers 

 which occur there are, from necessity, more or less terrestrial, maKing 

 their excavations in banks of earth or even depositing their eggs in 

 cavities already existing, as the brain-cavity of the skull of a large 

 mammal, as a horse or ox. 



Woodpeckers are found in all wooded portions of the world except 

 the island of Madagascar and the entire Australian Region." The 

 group is nearly equally represented in the two hemispheres, the 

 Western claiming about twenty-two genera and two hundred and 

 twenty-five species (including subspecies), the Eastern twenty-seven 

 genera and a little more than two hundred species and subspecies. 

 Three genera are of circumpolar range, with sixty-three American 

 (mostly Nearctic) and twenty-nine Palsearctic forms. 



KEY TO THE GENERA OP PICID^. 



a. Planta tarsi taxaspidean; rectrices rigid, with strong and elastic shafts, more or less 

 contracted or acuminate terminally. (Picinse.) 

 b. Outer hind toe not longer than outer front toe. 

 c. Maxilla without any distinct lateral ridge or groove; tip of bill pointed (not 

 chisel-shaped); tarsus nearly as long as longest toe with claw, the toes rela- 

 tively more slender and claws weaker. (Colaptese.) 

 d. Nostrils more or less covered by small antrorse prefrontal feathers. 

 e. Bill little if any longer than head, the gonys not longer (usually shorter) 

 than mandibular rami; tail not less than two- thirds as long as wing. 

 /. Bill more slender, appreciably decurved terminally, the gonys not 

 ascending terminally nor prominent basally; a large black jugular 

 patch; basal half, at least, of under side of tail yellow, orange, or red. 



Colaptes (p. 12), 



o- Woodpeckers occur, however, in Celebes and Flores, outlying islands of the 

 Australian Region, "which are situated so close to the Indo-Malayan islands that it 

 is safe to conclude that their woodpeckers are comparatively recent immigrants from 

 the latter." (Stejneger, Standard Nat. Hist., iv, 425.) 



