PICID^ — THE WOODPECKERS. 



567 



Dr. Cones calls attention to extraordinary differences in the color of the 

 iris, which varies from white to red, blue, yellow, ochraceous, or brown. A 

 mixture of blue, he thinks, indicates immaturity, and a reddish tinge the 

 full spring coloration. 



The male of this species has a white forehead extending a little backwards 

 of the anterior edge of the eye, the rest of the top of head to the nape being 

 red. The female has the white forehead, and a quadrate occipito-nuchal red 

 patch, a black band about as broad as the white one separating the latter 

 from the occipital red. Tiie length of the two anterior bands together is 

 decidedly greater than tliat of the posterior red. In both sexes the jugulum 

 is entirely and continuously black. Anteriorly (generally with a red spot in 

 its anterior edge) and on the feathers of its posterior border only are these 

 elongated white spots, on each side the shaft, the feathers of the breast being 

 streaked centrally with black. The inner webs of the secondaries have an 

 elongated continuous patch of white along their internal edge, with a very 

 slight, almost inappreciable, border of black ; this white only very rarely con- 

 verted partly or entirely into quadrate spots, and that never on the inner- 

 most quills marked with white. Specimens from California are very similar 

 to those from the Eocky Mountains and the Eio Grande Valley, except, 

 perhaps, in being larger, with longer and straighter bill. 



In M. flavigula from Bogota, the male has the head marked with the red, 

 black, and white (the red much less in extent, however) of the female M. 

 formicivorus, while the female has no red whatever. All, or nearly all, the 

 feathers of the jugulum have the two white spots, and (as pointed out by 

 Reichenbach) the white of the inner webs of the inner quills is entirely con- 

 verted into a series of non-confluent quadrate spots. The black streaks on 

 the sides and behind appear to be of greater magnitude, and more uniformly 

 distributed. In both species all the tail-feathers are perfectly black. 



A Guatemalan bird, received from Mr. Salvin as M. formicivorus, — and in- 

 deed all specimens from Orizaba and Mirador to Costa Rica, — agrees in the 

 main with the northern bird, except that all the black feathers of the jugu- 

 lum have white spots, as in M. flavigula. The outermost tail-feather of Mr. 

 Salvin's specimen has two narrow transverse whitish bands, and a spot indi- 

 cating a third, as well as a liglit tip. The white markings on the inner 

 quills are more like the northern bird, though on the outermost ones there 

 is the same tendency to form spots as in a few northern specimens (as 

 6,149 from Los Nogales, &c.). The bill is very different from either in being 

 shorter, broader, much stouter, and the culmen more decurved. 



These peculiarities, which are constant, appear to indicate a decided or 

 strongly marked variety, as a series of almost a hundred specimens of 

 the northern bird from many localities exhibit none of the characters 

 mentioned, while all of an equally large series from Central America agree 

 in possessing them. 



A series of Jalapan specimens from the cabinet of Mr. Lawrence show a 



