558 
PICARIAN BIRDS. 
Malayan countries, also with eight species. The last-named genus is remarkable 
for its large yellow or red crest. Lewis’s woodpecker ( A.syndesmus torquatus ) is 
an inhabitant of Western North America, extending into Arizona and Western Texas; 
and is remarkable for the structure of the body-plumes of the under surface, these 
being hairy in appearance, owing to the want of barbicules or hooklets to the web 
of the feathers. Its habits are also somewhat peculiar; and it is one of the few 
species in which the colour of the male and female is exactly alike. Dr. Coues 
writes: “ This is chiefly a bird of the vast forests that clothe most of our mountain 
ranges with permanent verdure. My own experience with the bird in life is 
conflned to the vicinity of Fort Whipple in Arizona, where it is a very common 
species—a bird of singular aspect, many of its habits are no less peculiar. One 
seeing it for the first time would hardly take it for a woodpecker, unless he 
happened to observe it clambering over the trunk of a tree, or tapping for insects, 
in the manner peculiar to its tribe. When flying, the large, dark bird might rather 
be mistaken for a crow-blackbird; for although it sometimes swings itself from 
one tree to another, in a long festoon, like other woodpeckers, its ordinary flight is 
more firm and direct, and accomplished with regular wing-beats. It alights on 
boughs, in the attitude of ordinary birds, more frequently than any other American 
woodpecker, except the flicker, and, with the same exception, taps trees less 
frequently than any.” 
Red-Headed The well - known North American red-headed woodpecker 
Woodpeckers. ( Melanerpes erythrocephalus) is a representative of a genus exclus¬ 
ively American, and embracing thirty-three species, ranging from the United 
States to Argentina. In habits these woodpeckers seem to resemble the 
other members of the family, so that there is nothing particular to record 
respecting them. In the British Museum there may, however, be seen an 
illustration of the way in which one of these woodpeckers stores up acorns 
supposed to be for its winter supply of food. A piece of pine-bark has been 
pierced with a number of holes, drilled for the purpose of receiving the acorns. 
The species to which this habit has been proved to belong is the white- 
fronted red-headed woodpecker (M. formicivorus), inhabiting Central America, 
from Mexico to Panama. 
Three species of this genus are known, all of them North 
American and Central American in habitat; one of them (Sphyropicus 
varius) also occurring in the West Indies. The genus does not possess the long 
extensile tongue of the other woodpeckers, sharing the want of this essential 
character with another North American genus ( Xenopicus ). Writing of the 
habits of the yellow-bellied sap-sucker ( S. varius), Mr. F. Bolles observes: 
“ I found a sap-sucker’s ‘ orchard ’ of about a dozen canoe-birches and red 
maples, most of which were dead, some decayed and fallen. The tree most 
recently tapped was a red maple about forty feet high, and two feet through 
at the butt. The drills made by the woodpeckers began at eighteen feet 
from the ground, and formed a girdle entirely round the trunk. This girdle 
contained over eight hundred punctures, and was almost three feet in height. In 
places the punctures or drills had run together, causing the bark to gape and show 
dry wood within. The upper holes alone yielded sap, and from this I inferred 
Sap-Suckers. 
