RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 
155 
ones continuing- their caresses after this period, I be- 
lieve that they often, and perhaps always, produce two 
broods in a season. During- the greatest 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 yellow- 
ish 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 cur- 
ving lines of white ; the wings are also black ; the 
lesser wing-coverts circularly tipt, and the whole pri- 
maries 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 the 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 ; the extremities of 
the whole tail, except the outer feather, are black. 
