The Red-naped Sapsucker 
Vermilion Flycatcher, Scott’s Oriole, and Beautiful Bunting, to the 
frigid austerities of Gray Jay, Pine Grosbeak, Leucosticte, White-crowned 
Sparrow, and Arctic Woodpecker. And this reckoning takes no account 
of the astounding discovery of the Great Gray Owl as a breeding bird of 
the Yosemite sector! Verily, California is a microcosmos, an epitome of 
geography and history in three dimensions. 
In default of more explicit information (which, ambitious reader, 
it is up to you to supply—there are still untrodden corners in the bird 
world), I copy in toto the ancient and meager account left by Dr. Cooper 
in the “Ornithology of California”: “I found the bird quite numerous 
about Lake Tahoe, and the summits of the Sierra Nevada above six 
thousand feet altitude, in September, and it extends thence northward, 
chiefly on the east side of these and the Cascade Mountains, as I never saw 
it near the Lower Columbia. At the lake [i. e. Tahoe] they were quite 
fearless, coming close to the hotel, and industriously tapping the trees in 
the early morning and evening. In the North I found them very wild, 
probably because the Indians pursue them for their scalps, which they 
consider very valuable. I noticed their burrows in low pine-trees near 
the lake, where they had doubtless raised their young. According to 
Nuttall, they lay four or five white eggs. I have found them silent birds, 
though probably in the spring they have more variety of calls. The only 
note I heard was a shrill, harsh, rattling cry, sufficiently distinct from that 
of any other woodpecker.” 
No. 196 
Red-naped Sapsucker 
A. 0 . U. No. 402a. Sphyrapicus varius nuchalis Baird. 
Description. —Adult male: Pileum, throat, and nuchal band spectrum-red (or 
scarlet-red to carmine); crown and throat-patches defined by black, narrowly on sides, 
broadly behind, the black border of throat below forming a conspicuous crescentic 
breast-plate; a white streak over and behind eye, more or less continuous with black- 
and-white mottling of upper back; a transverse stripe from nostril around throat and 
chest, and continuous with white of underparts; remaining upperparts black, variously 
spotted, banded, and blotched with white; middle coverts and upper tail-coverts nearly 
pure white, the first-named forming with the exposed edges of the greater coverts a 
broad white wing-band; inner webs of central pair of tail-feathers sharply black-and- 
white-barred; underparts, centrally, pure white or flushed with sulphur-yellow; sides, 
flanks, and under tail-coverts heavily barred or marked, chiefly in hastate pattern, 
with black. Bill and feet slaty; iris brown. Fall and winter specimens occasionally 
show a tendency to deepening of sulphur-yellow on underparts, and a tinge of the 
same in the spotting of upperparts. Adult female: Like male, but chin white, and red 
of throat reduced by invasion or intermixture of white; also a barely perceptible tendency 
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