326 YOUNG RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 
and young.—Red-headed Woodpecker, Penn. Arct. Zool. sp. 160.—Kalm, 
Trav. (Angl.) ii. p. 86.—Lath. Synop. ii. p. 561, adult.—White-rumped 
Woodpecker, Lath. Syn. ii. p. 563, sp. 10, young. 
MELANERPES ERYTHROCEPHALUS.—SWAINSON. 
See vol. i. p. 146, male. 
THE state in which the common red-headed woodpecker is here 
represented has given rise to a nominal species; and it is, in 
fact, so difficult to recognise for that bird, that we have thought 
proper, after the example of Vieillot, to give an exact figure 
of it. We feel no diffidence in affirming, that in this, through 
the exertions of Messrs Rider and Lawson, we have fully suc- 
ceeded ; and it will perhaps be allowed to be the best repre- 
sentation of a bird ever engraved. We have nothing to add 
to Wilson’s excellent account of the manners of this very 
common species, and, therefore, shall limit ourselves to the 
description of the young as represented. 
The young red-headed woodpecker is nine and a half inches 
long and seventeen inches in extent. The bill is short and 
robust, being but one-eighth more than an inch in length ; 
the upper mandible has the ridge slightly curved; the bill is 
horn colour, whitish at base beneath; the setaceous feathers 
covering the nostrils are very short, and not thick, rufous grey, 
tipt with black; the whole head, neck, and upper parts of 
the breast (which are red in the adult), are blackish, each 
feather broadly edged with whitish, giving the throat the 
appearance of being whitish, streaked with blackish; the 
auriculars are plain dusky black; from the breast beneath all 
is dingy white, the feathers of the breast and lower tail-coverts 
having dusky shafts; the back and scapulars are black, the 
feathers being margined with whitish grey; the rump and 
upper tail-coverts pure white; the wings are five inches and 
a half long ; the spurious feather very short, the first primary 
subequal to the fifth, the second to the fourth, the third being 
longest ; the smaller wing-coverts are uniform with the back ; 
the larger are of a deeper black, and tipt with pure white ; 
the spurious wing is wholly deep black; the under wing- 
