Genus SPHYRAPICUS Baird. 

 SPHYRAPICUS VARIUS (Linn.). 



175. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. (402) 



Cr'own, crimson, bordered all around witli black ; chin, throat and breast, 

 black, enclosing a large crimson patch on the former in the male ; in the 

 female, this patch white ; sides of heatl with a line starting from the nasal 

 feathers and dividing the black of the throat from a ti'ans-ocular black stripe, 

 this sepai-ated fi'om the black of crown In' a white post-ocular stripe ; all 

 these sti'ipes frequently yellowish ; under parts, dingy yellow, brownish and 

 with sagittate dusky marks on the sides ; back, variegated with black and 

 yellowish-brown ; wings, black with large oblique white bar on the coverts, 

 the quills, with numei'ous paired white spots on the edge of both webs ; tail, 

 black, most of the feathers white-edged, the inner webs of the middle paii' 

 and the uppei' coverts mostly white. Young birds lack the definite black 

 areas of the head and breast and the crimson throat patch, these paits being 

 mottled-gray. About, 8^ ; wing, 41-5 ; tail, 3i. 



Hab. — North America, north and east of the Great Plains, south to the 

 West Indies, Mexico and Guatemala. 



Eggs, four to six, white, deposited in a hole in a tree. 



In Ontario this beautiful species is strictly migratory, not having 

 been observed during winter, but from the fact of its being seen late 

 in the fall and again early in spring, we infer that it does not go far 

 south. 



It is decidedly a sapsucker, the rows of holes pierced in the bark 

 of sound, growing trees being mostly made by this species. It is 

 not endowed with the long, extensile tongue peculiar to many of 



