342 University of California Publications in Zoology [Vol. 24 



ing the little muskegs that are scattered through the woods, well 

 defined areas for which certain bird species showed a marked prefer- 

 ence. No three-toed woodpeckers were seen on Nine-mile Mountain, 

 though both species occur as a rule in the Hudsonian zone. 



A nest of the Arctic three-toed woodpecker was found in Kispiox 

 Valley. It was placed in a dead and charred Engelmann spruce, in 

 a strip of spruce woods bordering a muskeg otherwise surrounded by 

 poplar forest. The nest hole was eighty feet from the ground. It was 

 two and one-half inches in diameter and one foot deep, drilled through 

 an outer sheath of sound, hard wood, and downward through soft, 

 rotten ' punk. ' On July 3 it held one young bird nearly ready to fly, 

 and a second, not much smaller, which had been dead for some days. 



Four specimens collected (nos. 42118-42121), the young female 

 mentioned above, its female parent, and, at other times, two adult 

 males. 



Picoides americanus fasciatus Baird. Alaska Three-toed Woodpecker 



Four specimens collected (nos. 42122-42125), one adult male and 

 three adult females. They differ from Alaskan examples of fasciatus 

 in the notable restriction of white dorsal markings. The white bars 

 on the back are limited in extent and in only one specimen is there 

 even a trace of the white coalescing longitudinally. All four, however, 

 show white spots on rump and upper tail coverts, markings that are 

 supposed to distinguish fasciatus from americanus. 



Sphyrapicus varius ruber (Gmelin). Red-breasted Sapsucker 



All through the valleys this species was far more abundant than I 

 have ever found sapsuckers elsewhere. It is curious that there should 

 be this abundance here ; this must be near the outskirts of the range of 

 the bird. Ruber is regarded primarily as a coastal species, yet nowhere 

 on the coast is it found in such numbers. On the southeastern Alaskan 

 coast, near the Skeena River, it is doubtful if an observer would in a 

 whole summer see twenty birds — the number counted near Hazelton 

 in one forenoon. 



During May and elune a number of nests were found, mostly 

 through seeing the old birds carrying food to the young. One was 

 drilled in a live poplar, the tree a straight column with no branching 

 limbs save at the very top, the nest some seventy feet from the ground. 

 Another was in a dead birch, sixty feet up. Many others were noted, 



