1914] OrinneU: Mammals and Birds of the Colorado Valley 135 



the California side near Riverside Mountain, March 16. Five speci- 

 mens in all were secured, as listed in the table presented under the 

 discussion of Colaptcs chrysoides mearnsi. 



There is in the Museum another skin (no. 4325) taken by J. G. 

 Cooper at Fort Mohave March 12, 1861. 



Colaptes chrysoides mearnsi Ridgway 

 Mearns Gilded Flicker 



Detected by our party only in a restricted area within six miles 

 north of Laguna Dam. This area of occurrence coincided with the 

 westward extension across the Colorado Valley at this point of a belt 

 of the giant cactus, or saguaro. Here this woodpecker was fairly com- 

 mon, probably as a permanent resident. While closely restricted on 

 the desert to the saguaro belt, at least two pairs were nesting in dead 

 cottonwood stumps in the drowned-out area of the river bottom. A 

 nesting hole located here was eighteen feet above the ground, in a 

 large stub. It is probable that the species occurs, or has occurred in 

 the past, along the bottom timber up and down the river, though not 

 seen by us. The year 1910 may have been one of a series of unfavor- 

 able years when the range of the species was retracting through dying- 

 off of the frontier individuals. "We saw near Pilot Knob and at 

 several places above Picacho excavations in willows and cottonwoods, 

 which were too large for the Gila woodpecker, and in all probability 

 were made some years before by gilded flickers. Moreover, the Museum 

 contains two of Cooper's specimens, taken at Fort Mohave, consider- 

 ably above Needles, February 23 and April 2, 1861 (nos. 4328, 4329). 

 Cooper (1870. p. 411) found "two pairs" there, in cottonwoods. 



Nests of the gilded flicker were found by us, in the saguaro belt 

 above referred to, as follows: On the Arizona side, April 22, excava- 

 tion sixteen and one-half feet above the ground in cactus thirty-one 

 feet high, contained two fresh eggs ; April 24, excavation twenty feet 

 above the ground, not investigated. On the California side, April 23, 

 excavation ten and one-third feet above the ground, in cactus twenty- 

 eight feet high, contained one infertile egg and two small young. The 

 two parent birds taken with the latter had their gullets distended with 

 a mass of small black ants and ant larvae. It was in this same place 

 that Brown (1904, p. 46) found a nest of this bird in 1903. 



