76 YOUNG YELLOW-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 
both sexes in the ordinary dress. The well marked patch on the 
breast might induce the belief that this individual is an adult female, 
and that this sex, as several writers have erroneously remarked, is 
destitute of the red crown; but, in addition to the fact that our 
specimen proved, on dissection, to be a male, we obtained, almost 
every day during the month of November, young birds of both 
sexes, with the crown entirely red, or more or less sprinkled with 
that colour, the intermixture arising altogether from age or ad¬ 
vanced plumage, and not from sex. We are unable to state, with 
any degree of certainty, at what period the bird assumes the plu¬ 
mage now represented; and we rather incline to the opinion that 
it is an accidental variety. 
For the purpose of comparison, we have added, on the same 
plate, the most interesting portion of a young bird, as it usually 
appears in November of the first year; and though the sexes are 
then alike in plumage, we had the figure taken from a young male, 
in order to complete the iconography of that sex. 
Vieillot’s figure represents the young before the first moult, when, 
like our anomalous specimen, they have no red on the crown; dif¬ 
fering, however, in not having the head of a glossy black, but of 
a dull yellowish-gray, and the patch on the breast also of a dull 
gray tint. 
