456 
WOODPECKERS. 
is closely allied. Its food consists of insects, their eggs and 
larvEE, to which it sometimes adds, according to the season, 
seeds and berries. Audubon had the good fortune to meet 
with it in the pine forests of the Pokono Mountains in Penn- 
sylvania. It is, however, sufficiently common in the dreary 
wilds around Hudson Bay and Severn River. It is remarkable 
that a third species, so nearly allied to the present as to have 
been confounded with it merely as a variety, is found to inhabit 
the woods of Guiana. In this (the Picus tmdulatus of Vieillot) 
the crown, however, is red instead of yellow ; the tarsi are also 
naked, and the black of the back undulated with white. 
This species occurs sparingly in winter in northern New Eng- 
land and southern Canada, and representatives have been taken 
in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Occasionally one is met in 
summer in northern Maine and New Brunswick. 
AMERICAN THREE-TOED WOODPECKER. 
BANDED-BACKED WOODPECKER. 
PiCOIDES AMERICANUS. 
Char. Only three toes. Above, black, thickly spotted with white 
about the head and neck ; back barred with white ; beneath, white ; 
sides barred with black. Adult male w’ith yellow patch on the crown. 
Length about g inches. 
Nest. In a deep forest ; an excavation in a dead tree. 
Eggs. 4- ? j cream white j o.go X 0.70. 
According to Richardson, this bird exists as a permanent 
resident in all the spruce-forests between Lake Superior and 
the .Arctic Sea, and is the most common Woodpecker north 
of Great Slave Lake. It resembles P. villosus in its habits, 
seeking its food, however, principally on decaying trees of the 
pine tribe, in which it frequently burrows holes large enough 
to bury itself. 
This is only a rare winter visitor as far south as New Brunswick, 
though it has been taken in Massachusetts, and Dr. Merriam has 
found a nest in the Adirondacks. 
