CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN BIRDS. 299 



^ commonest species up to the fifty-sixth parallel, north of which it 

 yields in frequency to the three-toed species. {Richardson.) 

 North to Fort Simpson, on the Mackenzie River ; common. 

 {Ross.) This form, if it reaches the coast of Behring Sea at all, 

 reaches it by the way of the Northwest Territories. The specimen 

 in my collection was taken at Fort Reliance, on the upper 

 Yukon, about Lat. 66°,and undoubtedly the bird straggles still 

 further to the north. {Nelson) Common throughout the interior 

 of British Columbia ; breeds. {Streator.) East of the Coast 

 Range, B.C. ; a common resident. {Fannin.) A comm.on 

 species in winter at Lake Okanagan, B.C.; tolerably common in 

 the Cariboo district ; I have taken this form several times in 

 the lower Fraser valley. {Brooks.) In a series of eight skins 

 from British Columbia, one, a young female, lacks the white 

 spotting on the wing coverts characteristic of leucomelas. 

 {Rhoads!) 



The last references mentioned here evidently belong to the 

 form the writer places under hyloscopus. 



Breeding Notes.— On June nth, 1883, while in the spruce 

 bush I heard a curious chirping sound that scarcely ever seemed 

 to cease. I traced it to a small poplar tree, in whose trunk was 

 a hole about 30 feet from the ground. Having procured an axe 

 I soon had the tree down and found myself in possession of a 

 nest of young hairy woodpeckers. They were in a hole, evidently 

 the work of the parent birds, about a foot deep, 3 inches wide 

 inside and 2 at the entrance. The four youngsters were nearly 

 grown and fledged, and consequently were much crowded in this 

 narrow chamber. Three of them were precisely like the mother- 

 .bird in colour and the fourth differed only in having over each 

 ear a cockade of rich yellow. {Thompson-Seton.) A plentiful 

 species in Ontario where I have met with it both in summer and 

 winter. At the latter season it is often seen on wood piles in the 

 vicinity of houses. It breeds along the St. Lawrence and north- 

 ward. Unlike the other woodpeckers it is an early breeder, com- 

 mencing its nest-hole the tnd of April and usually having its 

 complement of eggs laid by May 6th. Most of the nests I have 

 seen have been in wet places or near water, and almost all were 

 in white ash trees, from thirty to fifty feet from the ground. Two 

 nests were in elm trees and one in a telegraph pole by the road- 

 side not more than ten feet from the ground. In this nest-hole 

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