ROCKY MOUNTAIN HAIRY WOODPECKER 35 



islay, or evergreen cherry {Primus iUcifoUa), eke out the winter 

 sustenance." 



Keferring to its manner of feeding, Milton P. Skinner says in his 

 notes: "On August 10, 1933, I saw a Cabanis working on both the 

 trunk and the limbs of a small Douglas fir. It worked all around a 

 horizontal limb and really seemed to be under the limb more than 

 above. It also worked on upright branches as well. I have also 

 seen a Cabanis feeding on the bark of a lodgepole pine. One day I 

 found one on a dead black oak, scaling off dead bark to get at the 

 insects beneath. So far as I can tell, these birds, in the Sequoia 

 National Park, seem to prefer to pick food from the surface and fur- 

 rows in the bark, and do not bore into the bark and wood as much 

 as other woodpeckers. During my work among the Big Trees, I 

 noticed that these birds seem to avoid the sequoia's bark ; but at one 

 place I found a living tree with many holes bored in the old wood of 

 its charred base, where it was unprotected by bark." 



Behavior. — Mr. Skinner's notes say that "this woodpecker has quite 

 a few mannerisms of its own. One, seen flying across a meadow, 

 went first to the limbs of Douglas firs, then to a small dead limb of a 

 sequoia, then to the limb of a fir, and then to the trunk of the same 

 fir. It perched lengthwise of limb and trunk each time. And this 

 procedure was followed again and again on different days. Usually 

 the Cabanis perches crosswise on a horizontal limb, especially when 

 resting or preening, but lengthwise on erect, or nearly erect, trunks 

 and limbs when feeding. 



"Although this woodpecker almost always flies to the exact spot it 

 selects, its flight through the forest is undulatory. The undulations 

 are due to the fact that it progresses by a series of wing beats. At 

 the end of each series, it seems to actually close its wings and shoot 

 forward with the impetus gained." 



DRYOBATES VILLOSUS MONTICOLA Anthony 

 ROCKY MOUNTAIN HAIRY WOODPECKER 



HABITS 



This large, white-breasted hairy woodpecker inhabits the Kocky 

 Mountain region, in the Canadian and Transition Zones, from central 

 British Columbia and Montana southward to eastern Utah and north- 

 ern New Mexico, and eastward to western South Dakota and western 

 Nebraska. Ridgway (1914) characterizes it as "similar, in large size 

 and whiteness of under parts, to D. v. septentrionalis, but with white 

 spots on wing-coverts much reduced in size or number, or altogether 

 wanting." It evidently intergrades with septentHonalis in Montana 



