60 LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. 



23. Dryobates pubescens oreoecus Batchelder. 



BATCHELDEK'S WOODPECKER. 



Dryobates puhescens orececus Batchelder, Auk, VI, July, 1889, 253. 



(B 77, part; 299a, part; R 361a, part; C 441, part; U 394&.) 



Geogeaphical range: Rocky Mountains and adjacent mountain regions from 

 Arizona and New Mexico north through Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, probably to 

 the southern parts of eastern British Columbia and western Alberta, in the Dominion of 

 Canada ; west through Utah and southeastern Idaho to Nevada. Casually to southern 

 California. 



Batchelder's Woodpecker, recently separated from Gairdner's by Mr. C. F. 

 Batchelder, whose name it bears, is distmguishable from the preceding subspecies 

 by having the under parts pure white instead of smoky brown; the white areas 

 are generally more extended, and the under tail coverts are immaculate instead 

 of being spotted or barred with black. It is also somewhat larger. Like the 

 former, it is distinguishable from Dryobates pulescens by the absence or scarcity of 

 the white markings on the wing coverts. The geographical and breeding range 

 of Batchelder's Woodpecker is as yet but very indefinitely ascertained. Dr. 

 Edgar A. Mearns, United States Army, reports it as breeding sparingly through 

 the Pinus ponderosa belt, ascending into the Spruce zone, on the San Francisco 

 cone, and considers it the rarest of the Woodpeckers found in Arizona. Mr. 

 Denis Gale took a nest and eggs of this subspecies in Boulder County, Colorado, 

 on June 12, 1889. The excavation was found in a half-dead aspen, 30 feet 

 from the ground, and presumably well up in the mountains, as Mr. William G. 

 Smith informs me that it is only a winter visitor in the lower valleys, and is 

 never seen there during warm weather. I found it rare near Fort Custer, 

 Montana, and only obtained a single male specimen, on November 23, 1884, 

 among the willows and cottonwoods on the Little Horn River. Dr. James C. 

 Merrill, United States Army, met with it breeding at Fort Shaw, Montana, 

 early in June, 1879, and tells me that five or six eggs are generally laid to a 

 set, and that the nesting habits are just like those of the Downy Woodpecker. 

 Among some skins recently sent me for examination by the Doctor, from Fort 

 Sherman, Idaho, taken during the winter of 1894 and 1895, are four specimens 

 which certainly can not be referred to either Batchelder's or Gairdner's Wood- 

 peckers; neither can they be called typical ^'■Dryobates pulescens" but two of the 

 specimens -come much nearer the latter than to the other two subspecies, the 

 under tail coverts in all of them being distinctly spotted. I am at a loss where 

 to place them, and it v/ill require a larger series of skins to determine their 

 proper status. Dr. C. Hart Merriam saw a small Woodpecker among some 

 burnt timber in the upper part of Wood River Valley, Idaho, which, in all prob- 

 ability, was referable to this subspecies. The United States National Museum 

 collection also contains specimens from the Bitter Root Valley, Montana; the 

 upper Humboldt Valley, in Nevada; from the head waters of the Cheyenne 

 River, and from Laramie, Wyoming; and it appears to be more common on the 



