NOTES ON THE HABITS, NESTS, AND EGGS OF 
THE GENUS SPHYRAPICUS BAIRD. 
BY CAPT. CHA.RLES E. BENDIRE. 
i. Sphyrapicus varius. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. 
The general habits of the eastern representative of this.genus, 
Sphyrapicus varius , the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, have been so 
well written up by Mr. William Brewster in the ‘Bulletin’ of the 
Nuttall Ornithological Club (Vol. I, No. 3, Sept., 1876. pp. 
63 to 70) , and later by Dr. C. Hart Merriani in the same ‘Bulle- 
tin’ (Vol. IV, No. 1, Jan. 1879, pp. 1 to 6), that there remains 
nothing new for me to state. 
As some of the readers of ‘The Auk’ may not have access to 
the above-mentioned articles, I will simply mention that, accord- 
ing to Mr. Brewster, the favorite nesting-sites of S. varius are 
large, dead birches, and that the average height of the excavation 
from the ground is at least 40 feet, in some instances consider- 
ably more, and that a decided preference is manifested by this 
species for the vicinity of water. He gives the eggs as number- 
ing from five to seven in a set, and varying considerably in shape, 
some being oblong, others decidedly elliptical. They average 
.85 in length by .60 inches in breadth, are pure white in oolor, 
and, he states, there is much less of that fine polish than in eggs 
of the other species of Woodpeckers he had examined. 
The average measurement of the few eggs of S. varius in the 
Collection of the National Museum, six in number only, is .84 X 
.65 inches. 
Auk, V, July, 1888. p. 2Z6~. 
