THE BIRDS OP HAITI AND THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 293 



In the Dominican Kepubiic Salle notes that in one taken near 

 Santo Domingo City he found the larva of a parasitic fly which he 

 succeeded in rearing and that was described by J. Macquart (in 

 1853) as an Anthomyid, Aricia pici, now called Philornis pici. 16 

 Cory (in 1885) , speaks of the woodpecker as abundant, and says that 

 the complete set of eggs usually numbered three. He recorded one 

 nest with eggs taken May 13 (year not given). Tristram received 

 a pair from A. Toogood, taken at Samana in 1887. Cherrie reported 

 that the bird tapped the trunks of palm trees for the sap, an observa- 

 tion that seems not to have been made by others. Christy says that 

 they are destructive to the fruit of the cacao, and reports that he 

 secured four slightly incubated eggs at Sanchez on February 27. 

 There are two skins in the United States National Museum taken by 

 A. Busck September 1, 1905, in the San Francisco Mountains. Ver- 

 rill heard bad report of the woodpecker as he says that it feeds on 

 " fruits, oranges and cacao-pods, and frequently ruins the crop." He 

 continues " fortunately its increase is kept down by a fatal provision 

 of nature in the shape of a parasitic worm that infests the throat and 

 head. This worm matures at the season when the young woodpeckers 

 are able to leave the nest, and after that time it is practically im- 

 possible to find an adult Melanerpes [that is woodpecker] alive. The 

 ground beneath the nests is often strewn with the dead and dying 

 birds, their throats and crops so distended with the disgusting para- 

 sites as to render them incapable of flight." This account would 

 appear to be considerably overdrawn as the species remains too com- 

 mon to support belief in such wholesale destruction. Danforth re- 

 ports that specimens he collected in the summer of 1927 were para- 

 sitized by round worms. 



J. H. Fleming has specimens from Sanchez, Caiia Honda, and 

 Samana collected by Verrill. J. L. Peters secured 19 near Monte 

 Cristi and Sosua, and describes nests seen in " post cactus " in the 

 lower Yaqui Valley. He found 25 birds congregated in one tree on 

 one occasion. Kaempfer examined a heavily incubated egg at Con- 

 stanza the middle of July. W. L. Abbott prepared skins at Laguna 

 on the Samana Peninsula August 7 and 8, 1916, and Sanchez Sep- 

 tember 24, October 20 and 23, 1916, and February 11, 1919. 



Wetmore, in 1927, observed the woodpecker occasionally on May 1, 

 in traveling from Comendador to Azua. On May 4 in crossing by 

 motor car from Santo Domingo City to San Francisco de Macoris it 

 was fairly common wherever there was forest growth. Two were 

 seen resting side by side on the trunk of a palm attentively examin- 

 ing a nest hole. Near Sanchez they were common from May 6 to 13. 

 Numbers were seen in the mangrove swamps on the lower Barrancota 



18 See Aldrich, J. M., Ann. Ent. Soc. America, vol. 16, 1923, p. 308. 



