1908] Grinnell —Biota of the San Bernardino Mountains. 65 
young was found in the same locality, June 14, 1906; and on 
June 26 of the same year a nest twenty feet up in a half-dead 
tamarack held five two-thirds-grown young and one rotten egg. 
So that a full set of eggs probably varies from four to six in num- 
ber. On June 18, 1907, a nest with small young was located ten 
feet up in an exceptionally large nearly dead tamarack pine. 
This was one of the lowest of a series of forty-seven well-formed 
holes of similar external appearance, which penetrated this one 
tree trunk on all sides up to an estimated height of thirty-five 
feet. Besides these there were many smaller drillings. When 
once selected by sapsuckers a tree is surely doomed. But there 
is probably no more than one tree in five hundred that is ap- 
propriated by the birds. We usually located the nests by watch- 
ing the movements of the parent birds, which flew from their 
foraging places, often far distant, direct to the nest tree. The 
young uttered a whinnying chorus of cries when fed, and the 
adults, though generally very quiet, had a not loud explosive ery, 
more like the distant squall of a red-tailed hawk. The bill and 
throat of an adult male, shot as it was approaching a nest, was 
crammed with large wood ants, not the kind, however, that are 
common at lower altitudes and smell so foully. 
Many grills of borings were seen in the bark of yellow pines 
and firs at Bluff lake which I aseribed to this species. Full- 
grown juvenals were secured at Bluff lake July 15 and 17, 1905. 
An adult male, taken August 30, was just completing the fall 
moult. A female taken September 2 was in complete new 
plumage. ‘Twelve specimens of this woodpecker were secured. 
Melanerpes formicivorus bairdi Ridgway. 
California Woodpecker. 
This species was seen in only two localities; near Seven Oaks, 
where in June and July a few individuals were noted among 
some tall yellow pines in a ravine a mile to the northward; and 
at the head of Mountain Home canon around Glen Martin, 6300 
feet, where two were seen June 10, 1906, and in July, 1907. At 
the latter place the characteristic borings of this species were con- 
spicuous on the trunks of yellow pines and black oaks. At Seven 
Oaks, June 24, 1906, we had been watching a Sierra sapsucker 
