RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 
115 
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, interspersed 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 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 colour; the 
legs and feet are of a bluish green, and the iris of the eye red. 
The tongue, or os hyoides, passes up over the hind head, and is 
attached, by a very elastic retractile membrane, to the base of 
the right nostril; the extremity 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. 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 
* Most probably swallowed with the insects which infest and are nourished 
in the various Boleti pohjpori, &c., but forming no part of their real food — Ed. 
