98 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



Mr. Lyman Belding, in his "Land Birds of the Pacific District," speaking of 

 this species, says: "Tolerably common from about 7,000 feet upward in summer, 

 often breeding in living tamaracks and covered with then resinous juice. In 

 Avinter down to about the lower edge of the sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana), 

 altitude about 2,500 feet, but rare here, and mostly female or young birds found 

 so low, while at Big Trees, Calaveras County, California, January 6-13, 1879, 

 I got thirteen adult males. In the breeding season they are most numerous in 

 the valleys, as at Blo'ods, Hermit Valley, Blue Lakes, etc. Their burrows vary 

 from 5 to 6 feet up to 30 or 40 feet. The young were still in their nests at 

 Bloods, July 21, 1880, but in 1881 they were about a month earlier." 1 



The following account is taken from my article on this species published 

 in "The Auk" (Vol. V, 1888, pp. 235-239), a few alterations being made in it: 



This interesting* Woodpecker is so unique in the entire difference of color- 

 ation of the sexes that for a long time they were considered and described as 

 separate species. It remained for Mr. H. W. Henshaw, when attached as naturalist 

 to Lieut. George M. Wheeler's expedition, engaged upon the geographical 

 exploration of Colorado and New Mexico, in 1873, to establish their identity, 

 he finding the supposed two species paired and breeding, near Fort Garland, 

 Colorado, in June of that year. Like Sphyrapicus varius nuchalis. it has an 

 equally wide and extended range, reaching from the eastern slopes of the Rocky 

 Mountains to the western spurs of the Sierra Nevada, and Cascade ranges in 

 California and Oregon. In its habits, however, it differs considerably from the 

 three other species of the genus Sphyrapicus, all of which seem to prefer regions 

 abounding- in deciduous trees, and using these, as far as at present known, almost 

 exclusively for nesting purposes, while Williamson's Sapsucker gives the preference 

 to coniferous forests, selecting pines to breed in, at least as frequently as aspens, 

 and, according to my own observations, oftener than the latter. 



Although it undoubtedly occurs in the region intervening between the 

 Rockies on the east and the Cascades on the west, I can not positively recall a 

 single instance where I have seen this bird in the entire mountain system, 

 beginning at the Bitter Root Range, in Montana, in the east, following the contin- 

 uation of this through the Blue Mountains of Washington and Oregon, as well as. 

 in most of the Salmon River mountain country in Idaho, till I first met with it 

 on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range, near Fort Klamath, Oregon, in the 

 autumn of 1882. It was here Dr. J. S. Newberry obtained the type of the 

 so-called 'Sphyrapicus williamsoni? Here I saw it for the first time on September 

 23, and as late as November 8 of the same year, taking specimens on both dates. 

 Strange to say, all the birds I saw and secured for a period covering about five 

 weeks, at that time, were females; and I only succeeded on October 28 in seeing 

 and obtaining my first male of this species. It was taken under rather peculiar 

 circumstances. I had only to walk a couple of hundred yards from my house 

 to find myself in a fine, open pine forest. Gun in hand, I, as usual, took a short 

 stroll that morning, following close along the banks of Fort Creek, directly east 



1 Occasional Papers, California Academy of Sciences, II, 1890, pp. 67, 68. 



