The Red-breasted Sapsuckers 
grubs. Few of us vegetarians succeed in enforcing our fad upon the rising 
generation—not, at least, till after they have risen. 
The Red-naped Sapsuckers, for the most part, retire in winter to 
Mexico and Lower California, but there is a scattering hre of them over 
western and southern California, and they are of regular occurrence at 
that season in the Colorado River Valley, at least as far up as Needles. 
Dr. Grinnell found them subsisting chiefly upon the bark and sap of 
willow trees, but in one instance they had attacked a mesquite. 
No. 197 
Red-breasted Sapsucker 
No. 197a Northern Red-breasted Sapsucker' 
A. 0 . U. No. 403a. Sphyrapicus ruber notkensis (Suckow). 
Description. —Similar to 5 . r. ruber , but slightly larger and coloration darker 
and brighter, the red of the foreparts, especially, richer, the white (or pale yellow) 
spotting of upperparts much less extensive, approaching that of S. varius nuchalis. 
Length 184.2-215.9 (7.25-8.50); wing 130 (5.12); tail 80 (3.15); bill 25.4 (1.00); tarsus 
21 (.83). 
Remarks. — Sphyrapicus ruber is, of course, derived from Sphyrapicus varius 
stock (or a common ancestor), and represents the obliteration of the highly developed 
head and breast pattern of varius by prevailing red. Although the ranges of the 
evolved forms now overlap considerably, we are inclined to regard intermediate ex¬ 
amples, which are not wanting in our own borders and are more common to the north 
and east, as persistent or reminiscent examples of earlier intergradation (throughout 
an area now no longer definable), rather than “hybrids” in the interspecific sense. 
In such examples referable to ruber, the malar white stripe may be carried through to 
connect with the lower breast, and the included black “breast-plate” of varius may be 
clearly definable under the red. 
The exaltation of ruber to the rank of a species is a deliberate defiance of the rule 
which would enjoin the assignment of subspecific rank to all forms known to inter¬ 
grade. For in the case of varius-ruber the degree of difference between them has passed 
all normal or comparable bounds. We do violence to our traditions either way (it 
is the bird’s fault for being so gaudy), yet the ruber fact is too glaring, too exceptional, 
to be embraced in the subspecific concept (however logically derived), and we choose 
to err on the side of common sense. Summa jus summa injuria. 
Range of 5 . r. notkensis. —Humid Transition and Canadian forests of the Pacific 
Coast district from southern Oregon north to Skagway, Alaska, and east to the eastern 
slopes of the Cascade Mountains. "In winter south through northwestern California.” 
Distribution in California. —“Common winter visitant to the northern humid 
coast belt, east through the Siskiyou Mountains and south through the San Francisco 
1 The latest shift of the nomenclatural kaleidoscope makes it necessary, for once, to list a SM&species ahead of 
“typicus”. The “Sierra Red-breasted Sapsucker” was known as S. ruber daggelli at the time our accounts were written. 
IOII 
