YVOUNG VYELLOW-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 2290 
this patch is usually obsolete, the breast being chiefly dusky 
grey, although the crown is entirely red. 
The specimen before us, possibly exhibiting one of the peri- 
odical states of plumage of this changeable bird, is the only 
one we have been able to procure, amongst a great number of 
the young of both sexes in the ordinary dress. The well- 
marked patch on the breast might induce the belief that this 
individual is an adult female, and that this sex, as several 
writers have erroneously remarked, is destitute of the red 
crown ; but, in addition to the fact that our specimen proved, 
on dissection, to be a male, we obtained, almost every day 
during the month of November, young birds of both sexes, 
with the crown entirely red, or more or less sprinkled with 
that colour, the intermixture arising altogether from age or 
advanced plumage, and not from sex. We are unable to state, 
with any degree of certainty, at what period the bird assumes 
the plumage now represented ; and we rather incline to the 
opinion that it is an accidental variety. 
For the purpose of comparison, we have added, on the same 
plate, the most interesting portion of a young bird, as it usu- 
ally appears in November of the first year; and though the 
sexes are then alike in plumage, we had the figure taken from 
a young male, in order to complete the iconography of that 
SeX. 
Vieillot’s figure represents the young before the first moult, 
when, like our anomalous specimen, they have no red on the 
crown ; differing, however, in not having the head of a glossy 
black, but of a dull yellowish grey, and the patch on the 
breast also of a dull grey tint. 
