HARRIS'S WOODPECKER 29 



borers. It drove its bill for three or four strokes up under a bit of 

 bark and then pried the bark off with its bill as a lever. Then it at- 

 tacked the semi-rotten wood so uncovered, directly. It did not seem 

 to work so fast as a downy woodpecker, but then it was so busy eating 

 grubs that it did not have to dig much." 

 Behavior. — The same observer says : 



They do not show a preference for any one kind of tree but are found on both 

 living and dead shrub oaks, long-leafed pines, loblolly pine, sycamore, sour gum 

 and sweet gum. They work on both trunks and limbs but usxially at low 

 heights, from the ground up to twenty feet above. On a vertical surface these 

 birds work up, spiraling it and tapping it as they go. They move by a series 

 of short hops, propping themselves each time with their tails. When hopping 

 lightly along a horizontal limb they still use their tails as props. Perhaps 

 their most astonishing feat is to spiral horizontal limbs, and to cling beneath 

 them and hammer them with their backs down. Sometimes they work their 

 way up to the very tip of slender shoots. 



Even in a heavy wind they cling to the violently swaying twigs while eating, 

 but they stay only a short time before flying to a tree trunk to perch and rest 

 before trying it again. * * • 



The flight of these birds is strong and undulating, with fast beating wings, 

 and generally only from one tree to the next. Where the trees are not very 

 close together, they swoop down to within a few feet of the ground and then 

 fly with nearly level flight untU they glide up to their next stopping place. 

 Where they have to fly out across intervening open fields their flight becomes 

 more undulatory, at times deeply so. 



DRYOBATES VILLOSUS HAKRISI (Andubon) 



HARRIS'S WOODPECKER 



Plates 4, 5 



HABITS 



The range of this well-marked subspecies is now restricted to the 

 humid coast belt from southern British Columbia southward to 

 Humboldt County, Calif. In 1895, Bendire wrote : 



Until within the last few years all the Hairy Woodpeckers from the eastern 

 slopes of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast have been considered as 

 belonging to this subspecies. * * * 



The breeding range of this race, as now considered, is a very limited one, 

 and is probably coextensive with its geographical distribution. It is apparently 

 confined to the immediate vicinity of the coast, and is not found at any great 

 distance inland. Among the specimens collected by me at Fort Klamath, 

 Oregon (mostly winter birds), there are two which might be called intermediates 

 between this and the more recently separated Dryobatcs villosus hyloscopus, 

 but the majority are clearly referable to the latter. In the typical Harris's 

 woodpecker the under parts are much darker, a smoky brown, in fact ; it is also 

 somewhat larger and very readily distinguishable from the much lighter-colored 

 and somewhat smaller Cabanis's woodpecker. 



