Genus SPHYRAPICUS Baikd. 

 SPHYRAPICUS VARIUS (Linn.). 



175. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. (402) 



Crown, crimson, bordered all around with l)laok ; chin, throat an<l breast, 

 black, enclosing a large crimson patch on the former in the male ; in the 

 fimale, this patch white ; sides of head with a line starting from the nasal 

 feathers and dividing the black of the throat from a trans-ocular black stripe, 

 this separated from the black of crown by a white post-ocular stripe ; all 

 these stripes frequently' yellowish ; under parts, dingy yellow, brownish and 

 with sagittate dusky marks on the sides ; back, variegated with black and 

 yellowish -brown ; wings, black with large oblique white bar on the coverts, 

 the quills, with numerous paired white spots on the edge of both webs ; tail, 

 black, most of the feathers white-edged, the inner webs of the middle pair 

 and the upper coverts mostly white. Young birds lack the definite black 

 areas of the head and breast and the crimson throat patch, these parts being 

 mottled-gray. About, 8^; wing, 4^-.5; tail, 3A. 



Hae. — North America, north and east of the CIreat Plains, south to the 

 West Indies, Mexico and Guatemala. 



Kggs, four to six, white, deposited in a hole in a tree. 



In Ontario this beautiful species is strictly migratory, not having 

 been observed during winter, but from the fact of its being seen late 

 in the fall and again early in spring, we infer that it does not go far 

 south. 



It is decidedly a sapsucker, the rows of holes pierced in the bark 

 of sound, growing trees being mostly made by this species. It is 

 not endowed with the long, extensile tongue peculiar to many of 



