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HAIRY WOODPECKER. 



Picus viLLOSus, Linn. 



PLATE CCCCXVI. Male and Female. 



This species of Woodpecker has been confounded with another to 

 which it bears a great resemblance in its markings, but from which it 

 is distinguished by its smaller size, and the differences to be presently 

 pointed out. Wilson, it appears, did not believe in the existence of 

 the Canada Woodpecker, Picus canadensis ; yet his figure of the Hairy 

 Woodpecker seems to me to be a representation of that species, while 

 his description belongs in part to both. These errors have been adopt- 

 ed by all his followers to the present day, although the specific dis- 

 tinctions between Picus mllosus and P. canadensis have been clearly 

 recognised by my young friend Dr Trudeau, who has written to me 

 from Paris that both species are in the national museum there, and 

 are looked upon as the same bird. Mr Swainson, who observed a dif- 

 ference between the birds of the present species received from New 

 York, and those of higher northern latitudes, has given an exact de- 

 scription and figure of the bill of P. canadensis, thinking that he was 

 describing P. mllosus of Linn^ds, To this he was probably led by the 

 erroneous accoimt given of the extent of the distribution of this species 

 northward. 



The Hairy Woodpecker, P. mllosus, is a constant resident in our mari- 

 time and inland districts; from the Texas, where I have found it nume- 

 rous, to theState of New Hampshire, as well as in all sufficiently wooded 

 tracts intervening between the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi, 

 and the northern borders of our great lakes. But not a single indivi- 

 dual of this species could I or my sons procure in the State of Maine, 

 where, however, the larger species, P. canadensis, was quite abundant, 

 and from whence it extends its migrations " as far north," according to 

 Dr Richardson, " as the sixty-third parallel." " It remains," he con- 

 tinues, " all the year in the Fur Countries, and is the most common 

 species up to the fifty-sixth degree of latitude, north of which it yields 

 in frequency to the three-toed species." 



Lively, noisy, and careless of man, the Hairy Woodpecker is found 



