I

ones continuing their caresses after this period, I believe 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 yellow1 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 curving lines of white; the wings are also black; the lesser wing-coverts circularly tipt, and the whole primaries 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 swordshaped 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,

sometimes touched with yellowish or cream colour; the legs and feet are of a bluish green, and the iris of the eye red. The tongue, or os hyöides, passes up over the hind head, and is attached, by a very elastic retractile membrane, to the base of the right nostril; the extremity of the tongue is long, horny, very pointed, and thickly edged with barbs, the other part of the tongue is worm-shaped. In several specimens, I found the stomach nearly filled with pieces of a species of fungus, that grows on decayed wood, and, in all, with great numbers of insects, seeds, gravel, &c. The female differs from the male in having the crown, for an inch, of a fine ash, and the black not so intense; the front is reddish as in the male, and the whole hind head, down to the back, likewise of the same rich red as his. In the bird, from which this latter description was taken, I found a large cluster of minute eggs, to the number of fifty, or upwards, in the beginning of the month of March.

This species inhabits a large extent of country, in all of which it seems to be resident, or nearly so. I found them abundant in Upper Canada, and in the northern parts of the state of New York, in the month of November; they also inhabit the whole Atlantic states as far as Georgia, and the southern extremity of Florida, as well as the interior parts of the United States, as far west as Chilicothe, in the state of Ohio, and, according to Buffon, Louisiana. They are said to be the only woodpeckers found in Jamaica; though I question whether this be correct; and to be extremely fond of the capsicum, or Indian pepper.* They are certainly much hardier birds, and capable of subsisting on coarser and more various fare, and of sustaining a greater degree of cold, than several other of our woodpeckers. They are active and vigorous; and, being almost continually in search of insects that injure our forest trees, do not seem to deserve the injurious epithets that almost all writers have given them. It is true, they

* Sloane.

frequently perforate the timber in pursuit of these vermin, but this is almost always in dead and decaying parts of the tree, which are the nests and nurseries of millions of destructive insects. Considering matters in this light, I do not think their services overpaid by all the ears of Indian corn they consume; and would protect them, within my own premises, as being more useful than injurious.

43. PICUS VARIUS, LINNÆUS. YELLOW-BELLIED WOODPECKER.

WILSON, PL. IX. FIG. II. — ADULT MALE. — EDINBURGH college MUSEUM.

THIS beautiful species is one of our resident birds. It visits our orchards in the month of October in great numbers, is occasionally seen during the whole winter and spring, but seems to seek the depths of the forest, to rear its young in; for during summer it is rarely seen among our settlements; and even in the intermediate woods I have seldom met with it in that season. According to Brisson it inhabits the continent from Cayenne to Virginia; and I may add, as far as to Hudson's Bay, where, according to Hutchins, they are called Meksewe Paupastaow, they are also common in the states of Kentucky and Ohio, and have been seen in the neighbourhood of St Louis. They are reckoned by Georgi among the birds that frequent the Lake Baikal, in Asia,† but their existence there has not been satisfactorily ascertained.

The habits of this species are similar to those of the hairy and downy woodpeckers, with which it generally associates. The only nest of this bird which I have met with was in the body of an old pear-tree, about ten or eleven feet from the ground. The hole was almost exactly circular, small for the size of the bird, so that it crept in and out with difficulty; but suddenly widened, descending by a small angle and then rounding + Ibid.

* Latham.

downward about fifteen inches. On the smooth solid wood lay four white eggs. This was about the 25th of May. Having no opportunity of visiting it afterwards I cannot say whether it added any more eggs to the number; I rather think it did not, as it appeared at that time to be sitting.

The yellow-bellied woodpecker is eight inches and a half long, and in extent fifteen inches; whole crown, a rich and deep scarlet, bordered with black on each side, and behind forming a slight crest, which it frequently erects; from the nostrils, which are thickly covered with recumbent hairs, a narrow strip of white runs downward, curving round the breast, mixing with the yellowish white on the lower part of the breast; throat, the same deep scarlet as the crown, bordered with black, proceeding from the lower mandible on each side, and spreading into a broad rounding patch on the breast; this black, in birds of the first and second year, is dusky gray, the feathers being only crossed with circular touches of black; a line of white, and below it another of black, proceed, the first from the upper part of the eye, the other from the posterior half of the eye, and both lose themselves on the neck and back; back, dusky yellow, sprinkled and elegantly waved with black; wings, black, with a large oblong spot of white; the primaries, tipt and spotted with white; the three secondaries next the body are also variegated with white; rump, white, bordered with black; belly, yellow; sides under the wings, more dusky yellow, marked with long arrow-heads of black; legs and feet, greenish blue; tail, black, consisting of ten feathers, the two outward feathers on each side tipt with white, the next totally black, the fourth edged on its inner vane half way down with white, the middle one white on its interior vane, and spotted with black; tongue, flat, horny for half an inch at the tip, pointed, and armed along its sides with reflected barbs; the other extremities of the tongue pass up behind the

This circumstance seems to have been overlooked by naturalists.

skull in a groove, and end near the right nostril; in birds of the first and second year they reach only to the crown; bill, an inch long, channelled, wedge-formed at the tip, and of a dusky horn colour. The female is marked nearly as the male, but wants the scarlet on the throat, which is whitish; she is also darker under the wings and on the sides of the breast. The young of the first season, of both sexes, in October, have the crown sprinkled with black and deep scarlet; the scarlet on the throat may be also observed in the young males. The principal food of these birds is insects; and they seem particularly fond of frequenting orchards, boring the trunks of the apple trees in their eager search after them. On opening them, the liver appears very large, and of a dirty gamboge colour; the stomach strongly muscular, and generally filled with fragments of beetles and gravel. In the morning they are extremely active in the orchards, and rather shyer than the rest of their associates. Their cry is also different, but, though it is easily distinguishable in the woods, cannot be described by words.

44. PICUS VILLOSUS, LINNUS. HAIRY WOODPEcker.

WILSON, PL. IX. FIG. III. MALE.

EDINBURGH COLLEGE MUSEUM.

THIS is another of our resident birds, and, like the former, a haunter of orchards and borer of apple trees, an eager hunter of insects, their eggs and larvæ in old stumps and old rails, in rotten branches and crevices of the bark; having all the characters of the woodpecker strongly marked. In the month of May he retires with his mate to the woods, and either seeks out a branch already hollow, or cuts out an opening for himself. In the former case I have known his nest more than five feet distant from the mouth of the hole; and in the latter he digs first horizontally, if in the body of the tree, six or eight inches, and then downward, obtusely, for twice that distance; carrying up