190 RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 



neck and head of a dull brownish ash ; and a male of the third year 

 has received his complete colors. 



The Red-bellied Woodpecker is ten inches in length, and seventeen in 

 extent ; the bill is nearly an inch and a half in length, wedged at the 

 point, but not quite so much grooved as some others, strong, and of a 

 bluish-black color ; the nostrils are placed in one of these grooves, and 

 covered with curving tufts of light brown hairs, ending in black points ; 

 the feathers on the front stand more erect than usual, and are of a dull 

 yellowish red; from thence along the whole upper part of the head and 

 neck, down the back, and spreading round to the shoulders, is of the 

 most brilliant golden glossy red ; the whole cheeks, line over the eye, 

 and under side of the neck, is a pale buff color, which on th<! breast and 

 belly deepens into a yellowish ash, stained on the belly with a blood 

 red ; the vent and thigh feathers are dull white, marked down their cen- 

 tres with heart-formed, and long arrow-pointed, spots of black. The 

 back is black, crossed with transverse curving lines of white ; the wings 

 are also black, the lesser wing-coverts circularly tipped, and the whole 

 primaries and secondaries beautifully crossed with bars of white, and 

 also tipped with the same; the rump is white, interspersed with touches 

 of black ; the tail-coverts white near their extremities ; the tail consists 

 of ten feathers, the two middle ones black, their interior webs or vanes 

 white, crossed with diagonal spots of black ; these, when the edges of 

 the two feathers just touch, coincide, and form heart-shaped spots ; 

 a narrow sword-shaped line of white runs up the exterior side of the 

 shafts of the same feathers ; the next four feathers, on each side, are 

 black, the outer edges of the exterior ones barred with black and 

 white, which, on the .lower side, seems to cross the whole vane as in the 

 figure ; the extremities of the whole tail, except the outer feather, are 

 black, sometimes touched with yellowish or cream color ; the legs and 

 feet are of a bluish green, and the iris of the eye" red. The tongue, or 

 OS liyoides, passes up over the hind-head, and is attached by a very 

 elastic retractile membrane, to the base of the right nostril ; the ex- 

 tremity of the tongue is long, horny, very pointed, and thickly edged 

 with barbs, the other part of the tongue is worm-shaped. In several 

 specimens, I found the stomach nearly filled with pieces of a species of 

 fungus, that grows on decayed wood, and in all with great numbers 

 of insects, seeds, gravel, &c. &c. The female differs from the male, in 

 having the crown, for an inch, of a fine ash, and the black not so intense ; 

 the front is reddish as in the male, and the whole hind-head, down to 

 the back, likewise of the same rich red' as his. In the bird, from which 

 this latter description was taken, I- found a large cluster of minute eggs, 

 to the number of fifty or upwards, in the beginning of the month of 

 March. 



This species inhabits a large extent of country, in all of which it 



