118 LIFE HISTOEIES OP NOETH AMEBIC AN BIEDS. 



retiring to the lower foothills and valleys to winter. It is especially abundant 

 along- the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevadas, in California and Nevada, as 

 well as on those of the Cascades in Oregon and Washington, and on both sides 

 of the Blue Mountains and connecting ranges in Oregon, Washington, and 

 Idaho. In the immediate vicinity of the coast it is not so common and occurs 

 only sparingly, but a few apj^ear to winter here. 



Mr. E. H. Lawrence writes me: "I occasionally saw one in January, 1892, 

 at Vancouver, and later in the season several apparently nested in the vicinity 

 of Ridgeville, Clarke County, Washington, in the broken tops of large cotton- 

 woods or willows, on the border of a slough of the Columbia called 'Lake 

 River.' In the summer these birds came to feed in some cherry trees by the 

 farmhouse where I stopped. Upon flying away each one usually carried off 

 a cherry in its bill. The only call or note of this bird I have heard is a 

 kind of peeping twitter, a sound that is weak and feeble for a bird of this size 

 to give. On July 10, 1892, I saw one on a cherry tree in the garden, circling 

 for insects; each time it flew a robin chased it, almost touching it, as valiant 

 as a Crow after a Hawk, but the bird made no resistance to the several attacks. 

 I also observed this species, on September 27, 1893, near Wilson's Peak, in 

 southern California, at an altitude of about 5,200 feet, flying by with an acorn 

 in its bill." 



Mr. F. Stephens writes me : " Melanerpes torquatus is irregular in appearance 

 in southern California, but is at times abundant. I have seen this species under 

 circumstances that warrant the belief that it occasionally breeds here, but such 

 instances are rare." 



It probably breeds in small numbers in the pine forests of the higher 

 mountain ranges in Arizona and southern New Mexico, where it has been found 

 at all seasons of the year by different observers. I saw large flocks near my 

 camp on Rillito Creek, during the winter of 1872—73, on several occasions; 

 they are more or less gregarious at this season. In northern New Mexico and 

 in Colorado it is a common summer resident up to 7,000 feet; these remarks 

 apply also to similar regions in Wyoming and Montana. The eastern limit of 

 its breeding range extends to the Black Hills, in South Dakota, where Mr.W. T. 

 Wood took a specimen on August 2, 1856, which is now in the United States 

 National Museum collection. In winter it has been met with in western Texas, 

 and it straggles also occasionally into the western parts of Kansas. Although I 

 have not been able to find a single reliable record of this bird having been 

 taken in any of the northern States of the Mexican Republic, I am confident it 

 will yet be found there as a winter visitor. I have met with Lewis's Wood- 

 pecker in the vicinity of nearly all the Military Posts I have been stationed at 

 in the West, but found it nowhere so abundant as along the southern slopes of 

 the Blue Mountains, in the vicinity of Camp Harney, Oregon, during the years 

 1875 to 1878. Here it was only a summer resident, usually arriving about the 

 20th of April, and in some seasons from seven to ten days later. It is by far 

 the most silent Woodpecker I have met, and, aside from a low twittering, it 



