OF NEW ENGLAND. 321 
momentary glimpse which I then had, I observed nothing 
peculiar in his habits. I have never found their nest or seen 
their eggs. 
V. PICUS 
(A) vittosus. Hairy Woodpecker. 5 
(Not common in Massachusetts, but abundant in the forests 
of northern New England, where it breeds.) 
(a). About 9} inches long. ¢, 
with a scarlet patch on the hind- 
head. Under parts,central back,and 
outer tail-feathers, white. (Feath- 
ers about the nostrils, yellowish.) 
Otherwise black and white. 
[Nore. There are Western va- 
rieties of this and the next species, 
with a soiling of gray on the breast, 
and without white spots on the 
wing-coverts. | 
(b). The eggs of each set are 
four or five, and measure ‘85 X& ‘65 
of an inch, or more. The nest is 
built in woods, or sometimes or- 
chards, and in Massachusetts is 
finished about the tenth of May. 
(See I, A, 6.) 
(c). The Hairy Woodpeckers are resident throughout the 
eastern United States, and in summer, if not also in winter, may 
be found from the Gulf of Mexico so far to the riorthward as 
forests extend. Yet they rarely breed in Eastern Massachu- 
setts, and are not even common in winter. The constant de- 
crease of woodland in this part of the State has caused them 
in a great measure to desert it, but in the forests of Maine 
and New Hampshire they are abundant throughout the year, 
Near Boston, they frequent orchards as much as the woods. 
Excepting in being much less familiar toward man, and more 
fond of solitude, they scarcely differ in habits from the com- 
22 : 
Fig. 19. Hairy Woodpecker (3). 
