68 BULLETIN 17 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Butcher Bird that I have ever watched has shown, while dealing with a 

 Mouse or Sparrow, more murderous energy. After finishing the foul deed 

 he left the female lying perfectly motionless and flew up again into the elm. 

 We now went out and picked up the female. She was still living but unable 

 to move. The [back] of her head was soaked in blood and her bare skull 

 showed in places. She died a little later. I skinned her and preserved her 

 skull which I have attached to the skin. It is punctured in 10 or 12 places. 

 The bird was in normal condition physically with healthy-looking ovary the 

 ovules undeveloped. The only injuries were to the skull. 



Doubtless a few downy woodpeckers move southward in autumn 

 or early in winter, especially from the northern part of the bird's 

 range. Dr. Charles W. Townsend in his Ipswich notes (M.S.) says 

 that he sees "evident migrants not uncommonly in October and 

 November." But most of our birds spend the whole year round with 

 us, and in autumn we may watch them as they make provision for 

 winter. Even before the leaves are off the trees — in September 

 here in New England — we may hear, day after day as we pass a 

 certain tree, the tapping of a downy woodpecker where, invisible 

 from the ground, high up on a branch, it is digging out a cavity, 

 its roosting hole, in which it will sleep alone through the long winer 

 nights, and into which it may retreat in the daytime whenever 

 "the frost-wind blows." 



DRYOBATES PUBESCENS NELSONI Oberholser 



NELSON'S DOWNY WOODPECKER 



HABITS 



This large race of the downy woodpecker inhabits the wooded 

 regions of northern Alaska and northern Canada, intergrading with 

 Dryobates pubescens mtdianus in southern Canada and possibly in 

 northern New England. 



Dr. H. C. Oberholser (1896a), in describing and naming it, char- 

 acterizes it as "similar to Dryobates pubescens [=medianus^, but 

 averaging larger; the under parts pure white instead of brownish; 

 the lower tail-coverts and outer tail-feathers averaging with much 

 less of black markings; red nuchal band of male averaging some- 

 what wider." 



Swainson and Richardson (1831) say: "This diminutive but ex- 

 ceedingly industrious Woodpecker is a constant inhabitant of the 

 fur-countries up to the fifty-eighth parallel. It seeks its food prin- 

 cipally on the maple, elm, and ash, and, north of latitude 54°, where 

 these trees terminate, on the aspen and birch. Its researches are 

 made mostly, if not wholly, on live trees." 



Dr. E. W. Nelson (1887) writes: 



Throughout the Territory [Alaska] where woodland or a growth of bushes 

 and small trees occurs the present bird is certain to be found, and is a resi- 



