190 RED-BELLIED "WOODPECKER. 
neck and liead of a dull bvownisli ash ; and a male of the third year 
has received his complete colors. 
The Red-bellied Woodpecker is ten inches in length, and seventeen in 
extent ; the bill is nearly an inch and a half in length, wedged at the 
point, but not quite so much grooved as some others, strong, and of a 
bluish-black color ; the nostrils are placed in one of these grooves, and 
covered with curving tufts of light brown hairs, ending in black points ; 
the feathers on the front stand more erect than usual, and are of a dull 
yellowish red ; from thence along the whole upper part of the head and 
neck, down tlie back, and spreading round to the shoulders, is of the 
most brilliant golden glossy red ; the whole cheeks, line over the eye, 
and under siile of the neck, is a pale buff color, which on the breast and 
belly deepens into a yellowish ash, stained on the belly with a blood 
red : the vent and thigh feathers are dull white, marked doAvn their cen- 
tres Avith heart-formed, and long arrow-pointed, spots of black. The 
back is black, crossed with transverse curving lines of white ; the wings 
are also black, the lesser wing-coverts circularly tipped, and the whole 
primaries and secondaries beautifully crossed with bars of white, and 
also tipped with the same ; the rump is white, interspersed with touches 
of black ; tlie tail-coverts white near their extremities ; the tail consists 
of ten feathers, the two middle ones black, their interior webs or vanes 
white, crossed with diagonal spots of black ; these, when the edges of 
the two feathers just touch, coincide, and form heart-shaped spots ; 
a narrow sword-shaped line of white runs up the exterior side of the 
shafts of the same feathers ; the next four feathers, on each side, are 
black, the outer edges of the exterior ones barred with black and 
white, which, on the lower side, seems to cross the whole vane as in the 
figure ; the extremities of the whole tail, except the outer feather, are 
black, sometimes touched with yellowish or cream color ; the legs and 
feet are of a bluish green, and the iris of the eye red. The tongue, or 
OS Jn/oidf's, passes up over the hind-head, and is attached by a very 
elastic retractile membrane, to the base of the right nostril ; the ex- 
tremity of the tongue is long, horny, very pointed, and thickly edged 
with barbs, the other part of the tongue is worm-shaped. In several 
specimens, I found the stomach nearly filled with pieces of a species of 
fungus, that grows- on decayed wood, and in all with great numbers 
of insects, seeds, gravel, &c. &c. The female differs from the male, in 
having the crown, for an inch, of a fine ash, and the black not so intense ; 
the front is reddish as in the male, and the whole hind-head, down to 
the back, likewise of the same rich red as his. In the bird, from which 
this latter description was taken, I found a large cluster of minute eggs, 
to the number of fifty or upwards, in the beginning of the month of 
March. 
This species inhabits a large extent of country, in all of which it 
