The Williamson Sapsucker 
linen paper, in heavy, branching lines, and coarse, frost-work pattern. 
Baby Sapsuckers are very clamorous in their dark nurseries—set¬ 
ting at naught the familiar adage that little children should be seen and 
not heard. Even after they have escaped from prison, they clamber 
about the nesting tree for some days before attempting flight. Wood¬ 
peckers of all sorts are very devoted parents; and the youngsters require 
careful initiation into the mysteries of bug-catching, sap-sucking, and 
bark-chewing. One can see readily enough how the birdies would take 
to sap, but the relish for “cambium,” the green stuff of bark, must be an 
acquired taste, like that for olives. 
Sapsuckers are more extensively migratory than any other wood¬ 
peckers, save Colaptes, but ruber's migrations are chiefly altitudinal. 
Retirement from the untenable heights is quite irregular, and dependent 
upon weather conditions. The winter distribution, also, appears some¬ 
what irregular and haphazard. The bird is very quiet and rather stolid in 
winter, as becomes a bird of high feather. It is, however, quite as likely 
to be seen in a city park or on a shaded avenue as in a foothill forest; and 
if its presence occasionally offends the exceptional horticulturist, the 
bird, at least, suffers from no sense of guilt. 
No. 198 
Williamson’s Sapsucker 
A. O. U. No. 404 . Sphyrapicus thyroideus (Cassin). 
Synonyms. —Williamson’s Woodpecker. Red-throated Woodpecker 
( male). Brown-headed Woodpecker (female). Black-breasted Woodpecker. 
Description. —Adult male: In general, glossy black changing to dull black 
or dusky on wings; throat, narrowly, scarlet-red; belly bright yellow (lemon or stron- 
tian); sides, flanks, .lining of wings, and under tail-coverts more or less mingled with 
white (black-and-white barred, or marked with black on white ground); a broad 
oblique patch on wing-coverts and upper tail-coverts, white; a few small, more or less 
paired, white spots on wing-quills; a white post-ocular stripe, connecting or not with 
a faintly indicated cervical collar; and a white transverse stripe from extreme forehead 
passing below eye to side of neck. Bill black or slaty; feet greenish gray with black 
nails; iris dark brown. Adult female: Very different. In general, closely barred 
black-and-white, or black-and-brownish; only breast pure black, in variable extent; 
whole head nearly uniform hair-brown, but showing traces of irrupting black; post¬ 
ocular stripe of male faintly indicated, and occasionally with touch of red on throat; 
some intermediate rectrices black, but exposed surfaces of central and outer tail- 
feathers black-and-white barred; white spots of wing-quills larger, paired, and changing 
to bars on inner quills; belly yellow and upper tail-coverts white, as in male. Young 
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