RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 
49 
into a hollow limb, twelve or fifteen inches above where it be- 
comes solid. This is usually performed early in April. The 
female lays five eggs, of a pure white, or almost semi-transpa- 
rent; and the young generally make their appearance towards 
the latter end of May, or beginning of June, climbing up to the 
higher parts of the tree, being as yet unable to fly. In this situ- 
ation they are fed for several days, and often become the prey 
of the Hawks. From seeing the old ones continuing their ca- 
resses after this period, I believe that they often, and perhaps 
always, produce two broods in a season. During the greater 
part of the summer, the young have the ridge of the neck and 
head of a dull brownish ash; and a male of the third year has 
received his complete colours. 
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 colour; 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 yel- 
lowish red; from thence along the whole upper part of the head 
and neck, down the back, and spreading round to the shoulders, 
is of the most brilliant golden glossy red; the whole cheeks, 
line over the eye, and under side of the neck, is a pale buff 
colour, 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 down their centres with 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 tipt, and the 
whole primaries and secondaries beautifully crossed with bars 
of white, and also tipt with the same; the rump is white, inter- 
spersed with touches of black; the 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 fea- 
VOL. II. — G 
