400 
BIRDS OF NEW MEXICO 
Attention was called by Doctor Merrill to a noticeable habit that 
the Rocky Mountain Sapsucker has of working down as well as up a tree 
trunk. As he said, “ when one dodges around a tree, in which, by the way 
it is unpleasantly expert, it is as apt to reappear twenty feet below where 
it was last seen, as above. In all its movements it is quick and active, 
and gives one the impression of being thoroughly wide awake” (1888, p. 
255). Its call note is given by Doctor Wetmore as a “low rattling keh-h-h , 
given in a somewhat guttural tone” (1920a, p. 399). During the nesting 
season, Mr. Jensen says, it can be identified by the way it pounds on a 
dead limb, as it strikes two blows, and after a short pause, four blows, 
repeating this over and over (1923b, pp. 457-458). 
At Lake Burford in 1918 Doctor Wetmore found the Sapsuckers 
fairly common among the yellow pines on the hills. On June 2, he found 
a pair east of the Lake. The female was working steadily on a yellow 
pine, adding a new row of drill holes to a patch of pits already a foot 
square. 1 he pair had a nest hole in a dead yellow pine about fifty feet 
from the ground, and the male remained on guard near it to prevent 
its being usurped by House Wrens and Violet-green Swallows, which 
were busy about other cavities in the same tree. “ He made little demon¬ 
stration save to fly down to the hole and look in when one of the other 
birds came near it, but this was sufficient, for they remained at a safe 
distance” (1920a, p. 399). 
Additional Literature.—Saunders, A. A., Condor, XII, 203-204, 1910 
(nest).— Swarth, H. S., Condor, XIX, 62-65, 1917 (geographic variation and 
coloration). 
ROCKY MOUNTAIN HAIRY WOODPECKER: Dryobates villosus montlcola 
Anthony 
Plate 38 
Inscription. Male: Length (skins) 8.5-9.3 inches, wing 5.1-5.3, tail 3.1-3.5 
bill 1.1-13, tarsus .8-1. Female slightly smaller. Adult male: Upper parts black, 
with scarlet nuchal band, white median stripe down back; tail with four middle feathers 
black, next pair black and white, two outer pairs entirely white; 
wings spotted with white (coverts sometimes plain black); 
sides of head with black band enclosed by two white bands; 
underparts white; iris reddish brown, bill grayish horn color 
legs and feet grayish. Adult female: Like male, but without 
red on head. Young male: Like adult male but without red 
nuchal band and with the crown usually streaked or spotted 
, Q r. i , "7 th Pa , le red (sometimcs yellowish or pinkish), the colored 
nak^forv" n alsp withvvhite. Young female: Like young male, but crown 
maiked only, if at all, with white. 
Comparisons. Of the three forms of Hairy Woodpecker that occur in New 
-If * no f hern > Ro f y Mountain, is the largest; the most southern, 
l ' i ■ iT U 7 i l - n ,1C Chihuahua, the white underparts are mainly 
brownish; m the White-breasted and Rocky Mountain, white. (See pp. 403, 4040 
Fig. 70. Foot of 
Hairy Woodpecker 
