SOUTHERN RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER 147 



main forest belt during the spring, summer, and fall, but regularly 

 performs an altitudinal migration which carries it down into the 

 tree growths of the western foothills and valleys for the winter 

 months." 



Nesting. — Very little seems to have been published on the nesting 

 habits of this sapsucker, which probably do not differ materially from 

 those of its northern relative, about which more seems to be known. 

 Wright M. Pierce (1916) located one of its nests in the San Bernardino 

 Mountains, on June 26, of which he says: "The cavity was in the 

 dead top of a large live silver fir about forty-five feet up. The cavity 

 had a small opening and was only 5 or 6 inches deep ; diameter, inside, 

 V/2 or 2 inches. The nest held two large young and one smaller 

 dead one. It was hard to see how more than one bird could survive 

 in such a small space, so it was not surprising that the probably 

 weaker bird had apparently been suffocated." 



Eggs. — The red-breasted sapsucker lays usually four or five eggs, 

 sometimes as many as six. Like all woodpeckers' eggs, they are 

 pure white, usually with very little or no gloss, and they vary from 

 ovate to rounded-ovate. The measurements of 13 eggs average 23.79 

 by 17.25 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 

 24.6 by 17.0, 23.81 by 17.86, 22.5 by 17.5, and 24.5 by 16.6 millimeters. 



Young. — Incubation is said to last about 14 days; this duty and 

 the care of the young is shared by both parents. Mrs. Irene G. 

 Wheelock (1904) says of a nest that she watched: "Incubation began 

 May 30, and lasted fifteen days. The young were fed by regurgita- 

 tion for the first two weeks. * * * 



"The young sapsuckers left the nest on the seventh of July, and 

 clung to the nest tree for three days. Here they were initiated by 

 both parents into the mysteries of sap-sucking. A hole having been 

 bored in front of each, with grotesque earnestness the mother 

 watched the attempt to drink the sweet syrup. During this time both 

 insects and berries were brought to them by the adults, in one hour 

 one youngster devouring twelve insects that looked like dragonflies." 



Mrs. Florence M. Bailey (1902) writes: 



The last week in July at Donner Lake we found a family of dull colored 

 young going about with their mother, a handsome old bird with dark red head 

 and breast. They flew around in a poplar grove for a while, and then gathered 

 in a clump of willows, where four young clung to the branches and devoted 

 themselves to eating sap. The old bird flew about among them and seemingly 

 cut and scraped off the bark for them, at the same time apparently trying to 

 teach them to eat the sap for themselves ; for though she would feed them at 

 other times she refused to feed them there, and apparently watched carefully 

 to see if they knew enough to drink the sap. When the meal was flnally over 

 and the birds had flown, we examined the branch and found that lengthwise 

 strips of bark had been cut off, leaving narrow strips like fiddle-strings between. 

 At the freshly cut places the sap exuded as sweet as sugar, ready for the birds 

 to suck. 



