76 RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 
June, climbing up to the higher parts of the tree, being as yet unable 
tofly. In this situation they are fed for several days, and often become 
the prey of the Hawks. Irom seeing the old ones continuing their 
caresses after this period, I believe that they often, and perhaps 
always, produce two broods ina season. During the greatest part of 
the summer, the young have the ridge of the neck and head of a 
dull brownish ash; and a male of the third year has received his 
complete colors. : 
The Red-bellied Woodpecker is ten inches in length, and seven- 
teen in extent; the bill is nearly an inch and a half in length, wedged 
at the point, but not quite so much grooved as some others, strong, 
and of a bluish black color; the nostrils are placed in one of these 
grooves, and covered with curving tufts of light brown hairs, ending 
in black points; the feathers on the front stand more erect than 
usual, and are of a dull yellowish red; from thence, along the whole 
upper part of the head and neck, down the back, and spreading round 
to the shoulders, is of the most brilliant, golden, glossy red; the. 
whole cheeks, line over the eye, and under side of the neck, are a 
pale buff color, which, on the breast and belly, deepens into a yellow- 
ish ash, stained on the belly with a blood red; the vent and thigh 
feathers are dull white, marked down their centres with heart-formed, 
and long arrow-pointed spots of black. The back is black, crossed 
with transverse curving lines of white; the wings are also black; the 
lesser wing-coverts circularly tipped, and the whole primaries and 
secondaries beautifully crossed with bars of white, and also tipped 
with the same ; the rump is white, interspersed with touches of black; 
the tail-coverts, white near their extremities; the tail consists of ten 
feathers, the two middle ones black, their interior webs or vanes 
white, crossed with diagonal spots of black; these, when the edges 
of the two feathers just touch, coincide and form heart-shaped spots ; 
a narrow sword-shaped line of white runs up the exterior side of the 
shafts of the same feathers; the next four feathers, on each side, are 
black; the outer edges of the exterior ones, barred with black and 
white, which, on the lower side, seems to cross the whole vane, as in 
the figure ; the extremities of the whole tail, except the outer feather, 
are black, sometimes touched with yellowish or cream color; the legs 
and feet are of a bluish green, and the iris of the eye red. The 
tongue, or os hyoides, passes up over the hind head, and is attached, 
by a very elastic, retractile membrane, to the base of the right nos- 
tril; the extremity of the tongue is long, horny, very pointed, and 
thickly edged with barbs; the other part of the tongue is worm- 
shaped. In several specimens, I found the stomach nearly filled with 
pieces of a species of fungus that grows on decayed wood,* and, in 
all, with great numbers of insects, seeds, gravel, &c. The female 
differs from the male, in having the crown, for an inch, of a fine ash, 
and the black not so intense; the front is reddish, as in the male, and 
the whole hind head, down to the back, likewise of the same rich red 
as his. In the bird, from which this latter description was taken, I 
“ Most probably swallowed with the inseets which infest and are nourished in the 
* various Boleti polypori, &c., but forming no part of their real food. — Ep. 
