296 BULLETIN 17 4, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Egg dates. — British Columbia: 13 records, May 8 to June 7; 7 

 records, May 14 to 26, indicating the height of the season. 



California: 75 records, April 9 to July 2; 38 records, May 3 

 to 28. 



Colorado : 22 records, May 5 to July 1 ; 11 records. May 22 to 31. 



Guadalupe Island : 6 records, April 8 to June 8. 



Oregon: 33 records. May 3 to June 12; 17 records. May 12 to 

 June 1. 



Washington: 17 records, April 29 to June 10; 9 records, May 12 

 to 24. 



COLAPTES CAFER CAFER (Gmelin) 



NORTHWESTERN FLICKER 



Plate 38 

 HABITS 



The northwestern flicker was formerly known as Cohtptes cafer 

 naturatioT Ridgw^ay, type locality Neah Bay, Wash. But it has since 

 been learned that Gmelin's name Piciis cafer was based on a bird 

 taken at Bay of Good Hope, Nootka Sound, British Columbia. As 

 this locality is well within the range of the northwestern flicker, 

 Gmelin's name has priority over Ridgway's saturatior. 



This larger and more richly colored race of Colaptes cafer in- 

 habits the humid Northwest coast region, from Sitka, Alaska, to 

 northern California, Humboldt County, including most of southern 

 British Columbia east to the Kootenay district. It is not only larger 

 than Colaptes cafer coUaris^ but its upper parts are browner and its 

 under parts are more strongly suffused with vinaceous. 



D. E. Brown writes to me that this "is the common woodpecker 

 of vrestern Washington. It will outnumber all the other woodpeckers 

 tw^o to one." Referring to its haunts on Mount Rainier, Taylor and 

 Shaw (1927) say: "As the noisiest and most conspicuous, adaptable, 

 and broadly distributed woodpecker in the park, the flicker is bound 

 to achieve some notoriety. It avoids the dark woods, and undoubtedly 

 prefers the tracts of dead stubs wdiich are encountered at fairl}^ fre- 

 quent intervals around the mountain; for here both nesting sites 

 and food are present in great abundance." 



Major Bendire (1895) says that "in western Oregon, and probably 

 also in northwestern California, it appears to be found only on the 

 summits of the different mountains between the Cascades and the 

 coast during the breeding season, where the same moist climate 

 prevails as is found in the immediate vicinity of the coast, while 

 in the drier lowlands, such as the Umpqua, Rogue, and Willamette 

 river valleys, it is replaced by" Colnptef< cafer collaris. 



Nesting. — The nesting habits of the northwestern flicker do not 

 seem to differ materially from those of its close relati^^e farther south. 



