96 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



SPHYRAPICUS, BAIRD. 



Pilumnus, Bonaparte. Consp. Zygod. Ateneo Italiano, May, 1854. (P. %- 

 roideus.) 



Bill as in Picus, but the lateral ridge, which is very prominent, running out dis- 

 tinctly to the commissure at about its middle, beyond which the bill is rounded 

 without any angles at all; the culmen and gonys are very nearly straight, but 

 slightly convex, the bill tapering rapidly to a point; the lateral outline concave to 

 very near the slightly bevelled tip ; outer pair of toes longest ; the hinder exterior 

 rather longest ; the inner posterior toe very short, less than the inner anterior with- 

 out its claw; wings long and pointed, the fourth longest; tail feathers very broad, 

 abruptly acuminate, with a very long linear point. 



SPHYRAPICUS VABIUS. Baird. 

 The Yellow-bellied Woodpecker. 



Picus varius, Linnaeus. Syst. Nat., I. (1766) 176. Wilson, Am. Orn., I. (1808) 

 147. Aud. Orn. Biog., II. (1834) 519. 



DESCRIPTION. 



Fourth quill longest; third a little shorter; fourth considerably shorter; general 

 color above black, much variegated with white; feathers of the back and rump 

 brownish-white, spotted with black ; crown scarlet, bordered by black on the sides 

 of the head and nape ; a streak from above the eye, and another from the bristles of 

 the bill, passing below the eye and into the yellowish of the belly, and a stripe along 

 the edges of the wing coverts white ; a triangular broad patch of scarlet on the chin, 

 bordered on each side by black stripes from the lower mandible, which meet behind, 

 and extend into a large quadrate spot on the breast; rest of under parts yellowish- 

 white, streaked on the sides with black ; inner web of inner tail-feather white, spotted 

 with black; outer feathers black, edged and spotted with white. Female, with the 

 red of the throat replaced by white. Young male, without black on the breast, 

 or red on the top of the head; iris dark-hazel. 



Length, eight and a quarter inches ; wing, about four and three-quarters ; tail, 

 three thirty one-hundredths. 



This bird is very irregularly distributed in New England 

 as a summer visitor. Verrill, in his Catalogue, before re- 

 ferred to, says that it is a common summer visitor, and 

 breeds at Norway, Me. J. A. Allen says, that near Spring- 

 field " it is not common, and is only seen in fall and spring, 

 when migrating. I have never seen this species here in 

 summer, and do not think it breeds here ; though I am 

 informed by W. H. Niles that ' they breed plentifully on the 

 hills in Western Massachusetts, twenty or thirty miles west 

 of Springfield.' " 



