138 BULLETIN 174, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Field marks. — The colored plates in the illustrated books on 

 ornithology lead one to expect to find the yellow-bellied sapsucker 

 rather a brilliantly colored, conspicuous bird. However, when we 

 meet it in the field, the colors, so bright and sharply outlined in the 

 picture of the bird, are often dimmed by the shadows of limbs and 

 leaves, and as the chief color is of a neutral tint, not unlike the bark 

 of many trees, we may sometimes pass the bird by, unnoticed. Our 

 first impression of the bird, when we catch a glimpse of it, 

 is of a medium-sized woodpecker, dull old-gold in color, and almost 

 without markings. A glass, however, brings out a thin line of white 

 along the length of the closed wing, a red or reddish forehead and 

 fore part of the crown, a black mark across the upper breast, and, 

 if we look very carefully, a yellowish belly. 



W. L. McAtee (1911) points out the black mark is characteristic 

 of nearly all sapsuckers, and he links it up pretty successfully with 

 a red forehead. For example, The red-breasted sapsucker lacks the 

 black mark, but has a red head; the flicker, not a sapsucker, has a 

 "black spot on breast, but top of head from bill is not red"; the 

 pileated woodpecker "not a sapsucker. Entire lower parts black." 

 He continues: "All sapsuckers have yellow bellies, few other wood- 

 peckers have; all sapsuckers have a conspicuous white patch on the 

 upper part of the wing, as seen from the side when clinging to a 

 tree; white wing patches in other woodpeckers are on the middle or 

 lower part of the wings. The yellow-bellied sapsucker of trans- 

 continental range is the only woodpecker having the front of the 

 head (i. e., from bill to crown) red in combination with a black 

 patch on the breast." 



Fall. — Generally when we see the yellow-bellied sapsucker in au- 

 tumn, during its slow journey toward the Southern States, it is alone. 

 A single bird may settle for two or three days in our dooryard, if 

 there be a tree there to its liking, perching well up in it and rarely 

 moving away. Here it is inconspicuous : its brownish color matches 

 the bark closely ; it moves deliberately, as if to avoid notice ; by hop- 

 ping behind a branch it keeps out of sight most of the time; and 

 commonly it is perfectly silent. On occasion it makes use of its 

 whining cry, and if two birds meet they may utter the red-breasted- 

 nuthatch note, but as a rule this woodpecker is one of the quietest 

 of migrants. 



If we watch a bird for a time, we see that it is picking at the 

 bark, dislodging bits of it in searching for concealed food. It hops 

 forward, backward, and around the limbs, moving easily, taking 

 rather long, rapid hops, seeming careless of a fall. When investi- 

 gating crevices and peering under flakes of bark it cranes its neck, 

 turning its head from side to side. The neck then appears con- 

 stricted, like a pileated woodpecker in miniature. 



