408 YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER. 



times with Passenger Pigeons. Though not as abundant as formerly, one can scarcely 

 enter the woods after the 10th of April, without being greeted by their querulous call- 

 notes. They are found everywhere in the mixed woods, but they are most numerous In 

 the vicinity of water, for they prefer to construct their nest in portions of dead trees 

 standing on the borders of lakes and swamps. The nest is usually irom twenty-five to 

 forty feet from the ground, always in a tree or limb partly decayed. I have found it in 

 beeches, sugar maples, ashes, and especially in white birches {Betula papyracea) and 

 also in black birches {Betula lenta). The bird never selects a cavity already made and 

 never excavates hard and sound wood, or such that is decayed and rotten. "A tree," 

 says Mr. John Burroughs, "with a natural cavity is never selected, but one which has 

 been dead just long enough to have become soft and brittle throughout. The bird goes 

 in horizontally for a few inches, making a hole perfectly round and smooth and adapted 

 to his size, then turn downward, gradually enlarging the hole, as he proceeds, to the 

 depth of ten, fifteen, or twenty inches, according to the softness of the tree and the 

 urgency of the mother-bird to deposit her eggs. While excavating, male and female 

 work alternately. After one has been engaged fifteen or twenty minutes, drilling and 

 carrying out chips, it ascends to an upper limb, utters a loud call or two, when its 

 mate soon appears, and, alightling near it on the branch, the pair chatter and caress a 

 moment, then the fresh one enters the cavity and the other flies away." The eggs, five 

 to seven in number, are pure white. They are deposited on the fine fragments of wood 

 at the bottom of the cavity. The eggs and young of few other birds are so completely 

 housed from the elements, or protected from their natural enemies— the Crows, Jays, 

 Hawks, Owls, raccoons, squirrels, etc. These beautiful birds are a great attraction of 

 the woods and cannot be missed among the feathered choir. Like other species, they 

 serve as carpenters for other birds, as their old holes are usually occupied during the 

 breeding time by White-bellied Swallows, Crested Flycatchers, Titmice, Wrens, and other 

 hole-breeders. 



In the Rocky Mountain region, fi-om British Columbia to the Sierra Bolaiios, 

 Mexico, and the Cape region of Lower California, westward across the Great Basin to 

 the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada in northern Cahfomia, the common Sapsucker is 

 represented by the Red-naped Sapsucker, Sphyrapicus varius nucbalis Baird. 



NAMES: Yellow-bellikd Sapsucker, Sapsucker, Common Sapsucker, Yellow-bellied Woodpecker. 



SCIENTIFIC NAMES: Picas rarius Linn. (1766). SPHYRAPICUS VARIUS Baird (1858). 



DESCRIPTION: Above,. black, much variegated with white. Crown, crimson, bordered by black and the 

 sides of the head and nape. A streak above the eye, and a broad stripe from the base of bill, passing 

 below the eye, and into the yellowish of the belly, enclosing a black crescent on the breast, and a 

 stripe on the edges of wing-coverts, white. A triangular broad patch of scarlet on the chin, bordered 

 on each side by black stripes from the lower mandible, which meet behind, and extend into a large 

 quadrate spot on the breast. Rest of underparts, yellow, streaked and banded on sides with black. 

 Female, no red on throat, which, is replaced by white. 



Length, 8.25 inches; wing, about 4.76; tail, 3.30 inches. (After B. B. & R., II, p. 539). 



Red-breasted Sapsucker, Sphyrapicm ruber Baird. This is a bird of the mount- 

 ains and foot-hills of CaUfornia, especially in the coast region, where it occurs north to 

 British Columbia. Major Charles Bendire, the eminent ornithologist and oologist of 

 the National Museum, found this species breeding in the neighborhood of Fort Klamath 



