NORTHERN THREE-TOED WOODPECKER. B08 
tinged with orange, and the feathers in this place very fine, 
and somewhat rigid ; they are black at their base, and marked 
with white at the limits of the two colours; the base of the 
plumage elsewhere is uniformly plumbeous ash: each side, 
from the corner of the mouth, arises a broad white line, form- 
ing a white space before the eye, prolonged on the neck ; 
beneath this there is a black one, which, passing from the 
base of the lower mandible, joins the mass of black of the 
body ; a tuft of setaceous white feathers advances far upon 
the bill beneath ; the throat, breast, middle of the belly, and 
tips of the under tail-coverts are pure white ; the sides of the 
breast, flanks broadly, and base of the tail-coverts, and even of 
some of the belly feathers, are thickly waved with lines of 
black and white, as well as the femoral and short tarsal 
feathers: in very old birds, as the one represented in the 
plate, these parts are considerably less undulated, being of a 
much purer white ; the wings are five inches long, reaching 
two-thirds the length of the tail; the spurious feather is 
exceedingly short, the first primary hardly longer than the 
seventh; and the four following subequal and longest ; the 
smaller wing-coverts, as mentioned, glossy black ; all the other 
upper coverts, as well as the quills, are of a dull black, the 
primaries being somewhat duller ; these are regularly marked 
on both webs with square white spots, larger on the inner 
webs, and as they approach the base; the secondaries are 
merely spotted on the inner vane, the spots taking the appear- 
ance of bands; the tips of all the quills are unspotted, the 
lower wing-coverts are waved with black and white, similar 
to the flanks ; the tail is four inches long, of the shape usual 
in the woodpeckers, and composed of twelve feathers, of which 
the four middle, longest, and very robust and acute, are plain 
deep black, the next on each side is also very acute, and black 
at base, cream white at the point, obliquely and irregularly 
tipt with black; the two next to these are cream white to 
the tip, banded with black on the inner vane at base, the more 
