92 BULLETIN 174, UjSTITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The range of the Arizona woodpecker includes southeastern Ari- 

 zona, southwestern New Mexico, Sonora, Chihuahua, and north- 

 western Durango; it is another one of tliose Mexican species that 

 barely crosses our southwestern border. 



Henry W. Henshaw (1875) was the first to report this wood- 

 pecker, under the name of Strickland's woodpecker, as entitled to 

 a place in our fauna; he writes: "This rare woodpecker is a com- 

 mon species on the foothills of the Chiricahua Mountains, where it 

 was one of the first birds that met my eye when the section where 

 it abounds was first entered. Whether it extends upward, and finds 

 its home during a portion of the year among the pines that here 

 begin at an altitude of about 1,000 [10,000?] feet, I do not know. So 

 far as I could ascertain, at this season at least [August], it is con- 

 fined to the region of the oaks, ranging from about 4,000 to 7,000 

 feet, thus inhabiting a region about midway between the low val- 

 lej^s and the mountain districts proper." 



Harry S. Swarth (1904) writes: "Although the Arizona Wood- 

 pecker is resident the year through in the Huachucas, it is singular 

 how the birds seem to disappear in the breeding season, that is from 

 the middle of April to the middle of June, when the young birds 

 begin to leave the nest. During this time their loud shrill call may 

 be occasionally heard from some wooded hillside, but the birds 

 themselves are seldom seen. I have taken specimens from the base 

 of the mountains, about 4,500 feet altitude, up to 8,000 feet, but they 

 are not often seen above 7,000 feet." 



Nesting. — We found the Arizona woodpecker well distributed in 

 Ramsay Canyon in the Huachuca Mountains from the base of the 

 mountains up to 7,500 feet, but nowhere common. On April 15, 1922, 

 while exploring the lower part of the canyon, which is quite heavily 

 wooded with giant sycamores, various oaks, ash, maples, black wal- 

 nut, and locusts, we saw an Arizona woodpecker excavating a nest 

 hole in a solid dead stub, about 50 feet up near the top of one of 

 the big sycamores. The hole was on the under side of the stub and 

 deep enough to take in all the bird but the tail. A red-shafted 

 flicker was "yuckering" in the top of another big tree, and I think 

 it had designs on this nest, for it subsequently drove away the Ari- 

 zona woodpecker; and later on the nest was found to have been 

 deserted. We found only one occupied nest; this was at an altitude 

 of about 7,500 feet in a branch of Ramsay Canyon ; it was about 20 

 feet from the ground in a dead branch of a small walnut tree, which 

 ^as growing up through an oak on the steep mountain side; the 

 entrance to the cavity, which was about 12 inches deep, was well 

 hidden; it contained three eggs well advanced in incubation on 

 May 16, 1922. The birds were heard in the vicinity, and one was 

 seen to relieve the other on the nest. Frank C. Willard's notes 



