130 BanGs, The American Three-toed Woodpeckers. AMM 
Geographic Distributton.— Boreal America, from Newfoundland and 
southern Labrador west across the northern Rocky Mts. to Alaska, 
south to Minnesota and New York and casually to Massachusetts. A 
common species everywhere in the spruce and fir forest. 
Specimens examtned.— Total number 58; from the following localities. 
Labrador: Bechoine, 1; Makkovik, 1. 
Newfoundland: Codroy,9; Flat Bay, 1. 
New Brunswick: Milltown, 2; Restigouche River, 4. 
Maine: Bangor, 2; Greenville, 1; Kathardine Iron Works, 2; Upton, 
9; Lake Umbagog, 12; Oxford Co., 3. 
New York: Lyonsdale, Lewis Co., 1. 
Michigan: Cadillac, 3. 
Montana: Fort Shaw, tr. 
Alberta: Red Deer, 5. 
Massachusetts: Wareham, 1. 
General Characters.— Size large (wing of adult J, 128.5 mm., of adult 
2, 124 mm.); back wholly shining blue-black; a narrow white frontal 
band; primaries not tipped with white; g with a yellow crown patch; 
bill large and broad. 
Color.— Upper parts shining blue-black, rump feathers with usually a 
few semi-concealed white spots; a narrow white frontal band; a short, 
narrow, white postocular stripe; a broad white malar stripe, meeting white 
frontal band, bordered by a black submalar stripe; nasal plumes mixed 
black and whitish; wings jet black, with little lustre; primaries spotted 
and notched with white, but without white tips; secondaries and tertials 
spotted on inner webs with white ; wing-coverts unspotted; when wing 
is closed no white spots show except those on primaries ; below white, 
heavily marked on sides and flanks with dusky ; 2d and 3d rectrices barred 
and mottled basally with black, clear white (usually stained) for more 
than half their length; 4th rectrix black basally and at extreme tip, white 
for a short distance below tip, rest of tail black. Adult @ with a bright 
yellow crown patch, usually cadmium yellow, but in some specimens 
(young birds in first autumn or winter?) much paler; adult 2 with 
whole top of head blue-black, except for white frontal band. 
Remarks. —P. arcticus can at once be told from any other 
three-toed Woodpecker by its wholly blue-black back. 
It has an enormous range over which it does not vary at all, 
specimens from the northern Rocky Mountains being indis- 
tinguishable from birds taken in New Brunswick and Maine, and 
even Newfoundland. Some males in autumn or winter have pale 
yellow crown patches. As it happens, I have seen more of these 
from Newfoundland than elsewhere, but the adult males in spring 
from Newfoundland have the crown patch dark yellow, and I 
