212 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



109. Picoides arcticus (Swains.). 

 Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker. Black-backed Three-toed Woodpecker. 



Of rare occurrence ; only one record. 



The Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker visits eastern Massachusetts rather 

 frequently — if somewhat irregularly and sparingly — in autumn and winter, 

 coming, no doubt, from the spruce forests of northern New England which it 

 inhabits at all seasons. It has been found repeatedly at places not far distant 

 from Cambridge, such as Beverly, Lynn, Woburn, Maiden, Melrose, Medford, 

 Dorchester, Hyde Park, and Milton, but the only instance known to me of its 

 occurrence within the region covered by the present Memoir is that of a bird which 

 Mr. Walter Faxon saw in Arlington on April 27, 1905. He writes me that it 

 was met with " near Turkey Hill .... in a growth of big white pines killed by 

 fire a year or two ago," adding " It was a fine male, with the yellow crown, and 

 I had him at close range to my heart's content. He was getting grubs from the 

 fire -killed pine in the characteristic way." The date on which this bird was noted 

 is exceptionally late, of course. 



Mr. F. W. Bridge has reported^ that " on October 16, 1883," he "shot a 

 female specimen of the Black-backed three-toed Woodpecker {Picoides arcticus) 

 at West Medford, Mass." He has recently informed me by letter, however, 

 that the bird was killed " in Medford (not West Medford) about one half mile 

 west of Pine Hill and close to the western side of what is now the Medford 

 Golf Links." This locality is about two and one half miles east of the Mystic 

 Ponds, and hence outside the limits of the Cambridge Region. 



Most of the records of occurrence of the present species in eastern 

 Massachusetts relate to single birds, but in the winter of 1 860-1 861 a piece of 

 heavy pine timber in Lynn, which had been burned over, the preceding summer, 

 attracted Arctic Three-toed Woodpeckers in such numbers that Mr. George O. 

 Welch " often sav/ as many as six or eight during a single visit to these woods." ^ 

 It is exceptional, of course, to meet with so many together in any part of New 

 England, for Arctic Three-toed Woodpeckers are not, as a rule, gregarious ; I 

 have known them, however, to occur even more abundantly in fire-devastated 

 spruce forests in northern Maine, to which they usually resort only during the 

 year after that when the trees are killed. 



IF. W. Bridge, Quarterly Journal of the Boston Zoological Society, III, 1884, 17. 

 2 W. Brewster, Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, VIII, 1883, 122. 



