262 NORTHERN THREE-TOED WOODPECKER. 



laud, and deposits, in holes formed in pine-trees, four or five eggs of a 

 brilliant whiteness ; its voice and habits are precisely the same as those 

 of the spotted Woodpeckers. Its food consists of insects and their 

 larvae and eggs, and sometimes seeds and berries. It is easily decoyed 

 by imitating its voice. 



This species is eminently distinguished among the North American 

 and European Woodpeckers, by having only three toes, the inner hind 

 toe being Avanting ; besides which it has other striking peculiarities, "its 

 bill being remarkably broad, and flattened, and its tarsi covered with 

 feathers half their length : the tongue is moreover not cylindrical, but 

 flat and serrated at the point, which conformation we have however 

 observed in the three European spotted Woodpeckers, and in the 

 American Picus varius, villosus pubescens, and querulus. In all these 

 species the tongue is flat, with the margins projecting each side and 

 serrated backwards, plain above, convex beneath, and acute at the tip. 



Linne, Brisson, and other anterior writers confounded this northern 

 bird with a tropical species, the Southern Three-toed Woodpecker, 

 Pieus undulatus of Vieillot, which inhabits Guiana, and, though very 

 rarely, Central America, but never so far north as the United States. 

 It is the southern species of which Brisson has given us the description, 

 while Linnd described the present. It is nevertheless probable that he 

 had the other in view, when he observes that in European specimens the 

 crown was yellow, and in the American, red, though, as he states, from 

 Hudson's Bay. The latter mistake was corrected by Latham, who 

 however continued to consider the southern as no more than a variety, 

 in which he was mistaken, since they are widely distinct ; but as he had 

 no opportunity of seeing specimens he is not to be censured, especially 

 as he directed the attention of naturalists to the subject. The merit 

 of firmly establishing the two species, is, we believe, due to Vieillot. 

 Besides several other traits, the nortliern bird is always to be distinguished 

 in every state of plumage from its southern analogue, by that curious 

 character whence Vieillot took his highly characteristic name [Pious 

 hirsutus^ Pic a pieds vetus), the feathered tarsi, a peculiarity which this 

 alone possesses to the same extent. The plumage is an uniform black 

 above in the adult, with the top of the head yellow in the male ; while 

 the southern, whose tarsi are naked, is black undulated with white, the 

 male having the sinciput red. It is worthy of remark, that the three- 

 toed group, found in Arctic, and in tropical America, should have no 

 representative in the intermediate countries. 



Although these are the only three-toed AVoodpeckers noted as such 

 in the books, several others are known to exist, some of which, long 

 since discovered, have through inadvertence, or want of proper discrimi- 

 nation, been placed among the four-toed species. The three-toed 

 Woodpeckers have been formed into a separate genus, a distinction to 



