152 YELLOW-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 



snake and boy fell to the ground ; and a broken thigh, and 

 long confinement, cured the adventurer completely of his 

 ambition for robbing woodpeckers' nests. 



YELLOW-BELLIED WOODPECKER. (Picus varius.) 



PLATE IX.— Fig. 2. 



Picus varius, Linn. Syst. i. 176, 20. — Gmel. Syst. i. 735. — Le pic varie de la Caro- 

 line, Buff. vii. 77. PI. enl. 785. — Yellow-bellied Woodpecker, Catesb. i. 21. — 

 Arct. Zool. ii. No. 166.— Lath. Syn. ii. 574, 20. Id. Sap. p. 109.— Peale's 

 Museum, No. 2004. 



DENDROCOPUS VABIUS.-SwAmsoN.* 



Picus varius, Bonap. Synop. p. 45. — Wagl. Syst. Av. Picus, No. 16. — Dendro- 

 copus varius, North. Zool. ii. p. 309. 



This beautiful species is one of our resident birds. It visits 

 our orchards in the month of October in great numbers, is 



* In this species and the two following, the little woodpecker of this 

 country, and many others, we have the types of a subgenus (Dendro- 

 copus, Koch) among the woodpeckers, which I have no hesitation in 

 adopting, as containing a very marked group of black and white spotted 

 birds, allied to confusion with each other. The genus is made use of for 

 the first time in a British publication, the " Northern Zoology," by Mr 

 Swainson, as the third subgenus of Picus. He thus remarks : — 



" The third subgenus comprehends all the smaller black and white 

 spotted woodpeckers of Europe and America. Some few occur in the 

 mountainous parts of India ; but, with these exceptions, the group, 

 which is very extensive, seems to belong more particularly to temperate 

 latitudes. 



"It was met with by the Overland Expedition in flocks, on the banks of 

 the Saskatchewan, in May. Its manners, at that period of the year, 

 were strikingly contrasted with those of the resident woodpeckers ; for, 

 instead of flitting in a solitary way from tree to tree, and assiduously 

 boring for insects, it flew about in crowded flocks in a restless manner, 

 and kept up a continual chattering. Its geographical range is exten- 

 sive ; from the sixty-first parallel of latitude to Mexico." 



Mr Swainson mentions having received a single specimen of a wood- 

 pecker from Georgia, closely allied to this, which he suspects to be 

 undescribed ; and, in the event of being correct, he proposes to dedicate 

 it to Mr Audubon, — Dendrocopus Audubonii, Sw. — Ed. 



