AVES PICID/E. 737 



awkward gait, hopping and walking alternately. I was told at Rio Bueno 

 that they nest in a deep hole in a tree-trunk high up from the ground, 

 about Christmas, laying three or four white eggs, but I never found the 

 nest." 



Genus DRYOBATES Boie. 

 Dryobates Boie, Isis, 1826, p. 977, type Picus pubescens Linnseus. 



Dryobates lignarius (Molina). 

 PicHS lignayius Molina, Saggio St. Nat. Chil. p. 342, 1782 (Chili). 



Description. — Adult male, 19275 Colin. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila. Chili, Dr. 

 J. K. Townsend. Total length, 7.00 inches ; wing, 3.60 ; culmen, .87 ; tail, 

 2.12; tarsus, .75. Whole top of head black, occiput scarlet, entire upper 

 parts including wings and tail transversely barred brownish black and 

 white ; under parts white, streaked with black, streaks broadest on the 

 breast ; a white stripe extending backward from the eye and another 

 below the ear coverts, the latter being dark brown. 



The female lacks the scarlet occipital crescent. 



Geographical Range. — Argentine Republic, Patagonia to the Straits of 

 Magellan ; Peru, Chili and Bolivia, the Island of Chiloe. 



This little woodpecker does not seem to be at all a common bird in 

 southern Patagonia, and while it has been recorded by many explorers 

 from the Straits of Magellan, all agree that it is rarely met with. The 

 naturalists from Princeton did not discover it at any point in their travels. 



The distribution of the bird and the occurrence on the immediate bound- 

 ary of its range of a Dryobates so closely allied to the present form as is 

 D. mixtns is of interest to the student of geographical distribution ; for 

 while at the present there do not seem to be intergrades between the two 

 forms, it can have been at no very distant period that they were at least 

 both geographical races of the same parent stock intergrading in the cen- 

 tral regions of their habitat, somewhere in central Argentina; even now 

 the birds when alive must be very difficult to discriminate as the chief 

 distinguishing marks are the broader stripes of white on the crown and 

 two extra bars of white upon the tail, which are characteristic of niix- 

 tus and serve to separate this bird from lignarius when examining pre- 

 served specimens. 



