ONTARIO. 



Saunders informs me that the record is now believed to be 

 incorrect. In the far west it is said to be common on the 

 mountains of Colorado, but differs from the eastern form in 

 having an uninterrupted stripe of white down the back, on 

 account of which it has been ranked as a separate species under 

 the name dorsalis or pole -back. 



GENUS SPHYRAPICUS BAIRD. 

 165. SPHYRAPICUS VARIUS (LINN.). 402. 



Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. 



Crown crimson, bordered all around with 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 head with a line starting from the nasal 

 feathers and dividing the black of the throat from a trans-ocular black stripe, 

 this separated from the black of crown by a white post-ocular stripe ; all 

 these stripes 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 numerous paired white spots on the edge of both webs ; tail 

 black, most of the feathers white edged, the inner webs of the middle pair 

 and the upper coverts mostly white. Young birds lack the definite black 

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

 mottled-gray. About, 8 ; wing, 4^-5. 



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

 West Indies, Mexico and Guatemala. 



Eggs, 4 to 6 ; 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 we see 

 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 the Woodpeckers, but feeds largely 

 on insects, which it finds on the outer bark of the trees or 

 catches on the wing. It has been accused of doing serious 

 injury to growing trees, by girdling them to get at the inner bark 



167 



