Part 17

Several races of this species have been recognized, three of which are included in the range above outlined. The American three-toed woodpecker (_P. t. bacatus_) ranges from Maine, Newfoundland, and Labrador west to northern Manitoba and southern Mackenzie; the Alpine three-toed woodpecker (_P. t. dorsalis_) is the Rocky Mountain form and is found in that region from Montana and Idaho south to the higher mountains of New Mexico and Arizona; the Alaska three-toed woodpecker (_P. t. fasciatus_) is found from Alaska, Yukon, and western Mackenzie south to Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

While the three-toed woodpecker is not regularly migratory, it appears likely that during severe winters it withdraws somewhat from the northern parts of its range. At this season it is occasionally collected or observed short distances south of its normal range (Massachusetts, southern Wisconsin, southern Minnesota, and southern New Mexico).

_Egg dates._--Alberta: 8 records, May 23 to June 16. Arctic America: 5 records, May 15 to June 9. Labrador: 3 records, May 26 and 27. New York: 3 records, May 14 to June 8.

PICOÏDES TRIDACTYLUS FASCIATUS Baird

ALASKA THREE-TOED WOODPECKER

HABITS

The range of this race of the three-toed woodpecker extends throughout the Hudsonian and Canadian Zones of western Canada and Alaska, and a short distance southward into some of the Western States, where it intergrades with the next form in the boreal forests of the Rocky Mountains.

Ridgway (1914) describes it as similar to the eastern race, “but with much more white on back, the white bars much larger and more or less coalesced along median line, forming a more or less continuous longitudinal patch; whitish spots on forehead much larger, sometimes coalesced into a nearly uniform dull white frontal area; upper tail-coverts and lower rump barred or spotted with white; sometimes even the wing-coverts and middle rectrices are spotted with white; black malar stripe narrower and usually less distinct, and black bars on sides and flanks narrower; averaging slightly larger.”

Dr. E. W. Nelson (1887) says that this woodpecker occurs “on the headwaters of the Mackenzie River, extending thence north along the course of this stream and the Anderson River, and westward, covering all the wooded portions of Northern Alaska to the northern tree-limit, * * * outnumbering by far the combined numbers of all the other woodpeckers of that region. * * * On the Yukon these birds are said to prefer the groves of poplar and willow to the spruces.”

Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1900) says: “This, the only species of woodpecker detected by me in the Kowak region, was resident throughout the year. It could scarcely be called common, though its borings were noticed in nearly every tract of spruces visited.” J. A. Munro (1919), referring to the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, says: “This species is resident and fairly common in Murray pine, Western larch, and spruce forests. I have never found them in yellow pine or Douglas fir country. They prefer the burnt areas of timber, and specimens collected are generally stained with charcoal on the underparts.”

_Nesting._--The nesting habits of this woodpecker do not differ materially from those of its eastern relative. Bendire (1895) mentions two sets of eggs, collected by MacFarlane in the Anderson River region, of which he says: “A single egg, originally from a set of three taken on May 30, 1863, accompanied by the female bird, was taken from a cavity in a pine tree, 4 feet from the ground, and another set of four, of which there are three eggs remaining, and likewise accompanied by the male bird, was taken on June 5, 1864, from a hole in a dry spruce, situated about 6 feet from the ground. The eggs from the last set were said to have been lying on the decayed dust of the tree, and were perfectly fresh when found.”

Laing and Taverner (1929) found an abandoned nest in the Chitina River region, Alaska, of which they say: “Tree, about 15 inches in diameter at butt, had a dead top and nest in this dead portion, about 40 feet aloft. Dimensions as follows: diameter of door barely 2 inches; depth of nest 9½ inches; greatest diameter 3 inches. Barrel of nest quite cylindrical.”

There is a set of four eggs in my collection, taken by Richard C. Harlow near Belvedere, Alberta, on May 29, 1926. The nest was about 20 feet above ground in a dead tamarack stub, among a scattered growth of tamaracks, in a muskeg, near a lake; the eggs lay on a bed of chips 10 inches below the entrance.

Mr. Munro (1919) writes: “On May 28, 1917, I found a nest that had just been finished, thirty feet from the ground in a dead Murray pine. The entrance was smaller than would be expected, slightly over one and a half inches, and the hole about fourteen inches deep.”

_Eggs._--The eggs of the Alaska three-toed woodpecker are indistinguishable from those of the eastern race. The measurements of 12 eggs average 22.08 by 17.09 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =23.6= by =18.1=, =20.8= by 16.8, and 21.5 by =16.5= millimeters.

_Behavior._--The plumages, feeding habits, and general behavior of this race do not differ materially from those of the species elsewhere, but Maj. Allan Brooks (Dawson and Bowles, 1909) has given a good description of a habit that seems to be shared by both species of _Picoïdes_ and that has been referred to by others; he writes:

When shot, even if instantly killed, three-toed woodpeckers of both species have a marvelous faculty of remaining clinging to the tree in death. Where the trunks are draped with _Usnea_ moss, it is impossible to bring one down, except when winged--then they attempt to fly, and fall to earth; but when killed outright they remain securely fastened by their strong curved claws. * * * The only chance is to leave the bird and to visit the foot of the tree when the relaxing muscles have at length permitted the body to drop--usually within two days. Once I was fortunate enough to observe the exact position that enabled the bird to maintain its grip. I had shot and killed an Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker on a low stump. On going up I found the bird’s feet to be three inches apart by measurement; the tail was firmly braced, and the further the body was tilted back the more firmly the claws held in the bark.

Dr. Grinnell (1900) says: “In the fall and mid-winter these birds are silent and seldom seen. But after the first of March their drumming on some resonant dead tree was heard nearly every morning. This sound could be heard a long distance through the quiet woods, giving notice of the whereabouts of the woodpeckers.”

PICOÏDES TRIDACTYLUS DORSALIS Baird

ALPINE THREE-TOED WOODPECKER

HABITS

This race of the three-toed woodpeckers enjoys the most southern distribution of any of the birds of this genus, ranging from northern Montana to northern Arizona and New Mexico, in the boreal forests of the Rocky Mountains. Ridgway (1914) characterizes it as “similar to white-backed examples of _P. a. fasciatus_, but larger; white markings on back usually all longitudinal (very rarely with any transverse bars of black), white supra-auricular streak usually broader, forehead usually with more black and less whitish spotting, white spots or bars on inner web of innermost secondaries larger, and sides and flanks usually less barred with black.”

The Weydemeyers (1928) say that in northwestern Montana, “unlike _arcticus_, this species prefers dense, virgin forests to cut-over woods and open woodland pastures. * * * In the higher elevations, this woodpecker may be found in white pine, lodgepole pine, alpine fir, and Engelmann spruce forests. In the Transition zone, it shows a preference for spruce woods, with larch and yellow pine forests as second choice. In the Canadian zone, this species is somewhat commoner than _arcticus_; in the Transition zone, it occurs only about one-third as frequently as does the larger bird.”

M. P. Skinner says, in his Yellowstone National Park notes: “This woodpecker is rather uncommon, but I have seen it in coniferous forests between 6,500 and 8,000 feet, in firs, lodgepole pine, and Engelmann spruce. I have also seen it on dead trees and on telephone poles. I have seen this woodpecker in this Park only between May and October.”

_Nesting._--At an altitude of about 9,000 feet in the mountains of Colorado, in or near Estes Park, John H. Flanagan (1911) collected a set of four eggs of the alpine three-toed woodpecker. “The hole was in an aspen stub, nine feet from the ground and about a foot or eighteen inches from the top, and just before the guide reached the hole the bird flew out. * * *

“The entrance to the nesting cavity was about one and one-half inches in diameter; the cavity itself about nine or ten inches in depth and quite large at the bottom. The eggs were laid on a few chips.”

In north-central Colorado, Edwin R. Warren (1912) found a nest of this woodpecker “in a dead Engelmann spruce, which was twenty-five inches in diameter at the base, and twenty at the nest hole, the latter being seven feet above ground. The nest was eight inches deep, the entrance one and three-quarters inches in diameter; the thickness of the wood on the front side of the hole was two and three-quarters inches, and the cavity was five inches from front to back, and three wide. There were a few chips in the bottom, as well as a few of the birds’ droppings. There were two young, about ready to fly, though I had no difficulty in posing them on the tree for pictures; they showed little or no fear.”

Randolph Jenks (1934) discovered two nests of the alpine three-toed woodpecker on the Kaibab Plateau, near the east rim of the Grand Canyon, in northern Arizona. One was in “a hole in an aspen tree, two and one-half inches in diameter, opening to the southeast, twelve feet from the ground. The cavity was eight inches deep and the nest was lined with a thick layer of maggot-infested sawdust. In spite of the crawling competitors, the nestlings, a male and a female, seemed quite contented.” This was on June 30, 1931. Several days later another nest was found, also on the Plateau, at an elevation of 8,100 feet; this nest was “in a hole about sixty feet above the ground in a western yellow pine.”

Dr. Edgar A. Mearns (1890b) writes:

The Alpine Three-toed Woodpecker breeds commonly throughout the pine belt, seldom ascending far into the spruce woods of the highest peaks [in the mountains of Arizona]. On the northwestern slope of San Francisco Mountain I discovered a nest of this species on June 8, 1887. The female was seen alone pecking at a large yellow pine, which, although dead, still retained its bark and was quite solid. While feeding she uttered a peculiar, harsh, nasal cry. I shot her, and then noticed a small, neatly bored hole in the south side of the pine trunk, about 30 feet from the ground and away from branches. With the aid of a rope, and taking a start from the saddle, I was scarcely able to climb to the nest, which the male did not quit until I was well up; then he came out and uttered a sudden, sharp “whip-whip-whip” in a menacing tone, remaining hard by while I worked with saw and chisel. It took me nearly half an hour to make an opening sufficiently large to admit the hand, as the burrow was situated so extraordinarily deep. Two young, male and female, with feathers just sprouting, were found on a bed of small chips at the bottom of the burrow, not more than 8 inches lower than the entrance, but in the very heart of the tree, the cavity being oblique and pear-shaped, and having the strong odor characteristic of Woodpeckers’ nests in general. Both parents and their progeny were preserved, and are now in the American Museum collection. The irides of the adults were dark cherry red; their feet, claws, and basal half of mandible plumbeous, the rest of the bill being plumbeous black.

_Eggs._--The alpine three-toed woodpecker is said to lay five eggs to a set, but probably the set oftener consists of fewer eggs. I have seen no eggs of this subspecies; and the only measurements I have been able to get are those from a set of five eggs, collected by A. Treganza in Salt Lake County, Utah, on June 3, 1916; these are in the P. B. Philipp collection in the American Museum of Natural History. The measurements average 24.52 by 17.52 millimeters, rather large for the species; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =25.3= by =17.7= and =24.1= by =17.4= millimeters.

_Food._--Mrs. Bailey (1928) says that the food of this woodpecker consists of “over 75 percent, destructive wood-boring larvae of caterpillars and beetles. The Three-toed Woodpeckers rank high as conservators of the forest, eliminating annually, as Professor Beal has estimated, some 13,675 of the grubs most destructive to forests. The scarcity of these useful woodpeckers makes their protection and encouragement especially important.”

SPHYRAPICUS VARIUS VARIUS (Linnaeus)

YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER

PLATES 18, 19

HABITS

CONTRIBUTED BY WINSOR MARRETT TYLER

_Spring._--It is spring in the Transition Zone when in April the yellow-bellied sapsucker passes through on the way from its winter quarters to its breeding ground in the Canadian Zone. If spring is tardy most of the trees may be leafless, but many of them have blossomed, and the sap is running.

At this season the sapsucker is light-hearted and jaunty compared to the sober, quiet bird that visited us the autumn before. The breeding season is near at hand, and if two birds meet they often engage in a sort of game, a precursory courtship, wherein one bird flies at the other in a playful attack; the other eludes the rush of the oncoming bird by a sudden, last-minute retreat--winding around the branch on which it rests, or sliding off into the air. In these pursuits in and out among the branches we are impressed by the agility and grace of the birds and by the easy way they direct their course through the air. They do not appear to impel themselves by strength of wing alone, but, especially in their slanting descents, they let the force of gravity pull them swiftly along, and then, by the impetus of the speed attained, glide upward to a perch. They seem to swing from branch to branch with little effort, slowly opening and closing their wings to guide them on their way. As we watch them we are reminded of trapeze artists in the circus.

But the new sap is running, and the birds quickly tap the supply by drilling into the bark of their favorite trees and drink of the sap as it flows freely from the wounds.

Every spring the birds come to a sturdy yellow birch tree on the Boston Public Garden, a species of tree with which they must be familiar on their breeding grounds in the north. The sap flows plenteously in mid-April from the many punctures that the birds make; it wets a large portion of the trunk of the tree and often drips to the ground from the branches. The birds stand clear of the tree as they feed at the sap wells with only the feet and the tip of the tail touching the bark. The tail is braced against the trunk at an angle of about 45°, and the feet reach far forward to grasp the bark opposite the bend of the wing. I have never seen a sapsucker crouch against this wet bark as a downy woodpecker commonly does when digging out a grub--like a cat hunched up lapping a saucer of milk. When a bird wishes to move to a point below where it is perched, it jumps from the tree and floats in the air, then turning, with its wings held out somewhat, dives head-downward, drifting in an easy, leisurely manner as if moving under water; then, just before alighting, it rights itself. If you come too near, the sapsucker scrambles around to the rear of the limb, and if you step close up to the tree, the bird starts away in free, sweeping curves, like a skater over the ice, the white in the wing flashing out.

Eaton (1914) notes that “during the migration it is evident that the male birds arrive first, for during 15 years of continuous records which I have kept with this object in view I have found that male birds are the first to be seen each year and no females are seen for several days after the first males arrive.”

Audubon (1842) records the following unique observation:

While travelling I observed that they performed their migration by day, in loose parties or families of six or seven individuals, flying at a great height, and at the intervals between their sailings and the flappings of their wings, emitting their remarkable plaintive cries. When alighting towards sunset, they descended with amazing speed in a tortuous manner, and first settled on the tops of the highest trees, where they remained perfectly silent for awhile, after which they betook themselves to the central parts of the thickest trees, and searched along the trunks for abandoned holes of Squirrels or Woodpeckers, in which they spent the night, several together in the same hole.

A. B. Klugh (1909) reports a remarkably large gathering of sapsuckers on their northward migration. He says:

On the morning of April 17th, 1909, the city of Kingston, Ontario, was alive with yellow-bellied sapsuckers.

From my study window I saw some twenty of them on the trees at the lodge of the park and on going out to investigate I found from one to four on nearly every tree. As a conservative estimate I placed the number of birds in the park at three hundred. * * *

The probable cause of this immense wave of yellow-bellied sapsuckers striking Kingston lies in the strong gale from the north which was blowing on the night of April 16th, the birds apparently dropping as soon as they had crossed the lake.

_Courtship._--Little has been recorded on the courtship of the yellow-bellied sapsucker, but we may get a hint of its early stages at least as the birds pass northward--the increased interest in each other shown by their lively pursuits and their rapid whirlings among the branches, as noted under “Spring.”

George Miksch Sutton (1928b) speaks thus of the birds on their nesting ground in Pennsylvania: “In late May and June the mewing cry was familiar and they occasionally indulged in strange courtship antics, flashing through the tops of the trees, calling excitedly in tones resembling those of a flicker, and dancing about with wings and tail spread in a manner utterly foreign to the usually stolid bearing of migrant individuals.”

Of the spring drumming, perhaps a part of courtship, Dr. Harry C. Oberholser (1896b) says:

In spring the drumming of the yellow-bellied sapsucker may usually be easily recognized by the following peculiarities. Four or five taps given in quick succession are followed by a short pause, this being soon succeeded by two short quick taps; then another pause, and two more taps in somewhat less rapid succession than the first; followed by yet another pause, and two additional taps still a little slower. This is sometimes slightly varied with regard to the number of taps; and occasionally also the latter part consists only of single quick taps with an increasing interval toward the last.

The difference between the tapping of the sapsucker and of the hairy and the downy woodpecker is described in the life history of the latter bird. Wendell Taber told Mr. Bent that he succeeded in calling up three of these birds by imitating their drumming with a fountain pen on a dead tree; one of them alighted on the tree on which he was drumming.

_Nesting._--William Brewster (1876a), writing of the nesting of the sapsucker at Umbagog Lake, Maine, says:

They arrive from the South, where they spend the winter, from the middle to the last of April, and, pairing being soon effected, commence at once the excavation of their nests. The trees usually selected are large dead birches, and a decided preference is manifested for the vicinity of water, though some nests occur on high ground in the interior of the woods, but never so abundantly there as along the margin of rivers and lakes. Both sexes work alternately, relieving each other at frequent intervals, the bird not employed usually clinging near the hole and encouraging its toiling mate, by an occasional low cry. With the deepening of the hole arises the necessity for increased labor, as the rapidly accumulating debris must be removed, and the bird now appears at frequent intervals at the entrance, and, dropping its mouthful of chips, returns to its work. A week or more is occupied in the completion of the nest, the time varying considerably with the relative hardness of the wood. A small quantity of the finer chips are left at the bottom to serve as a bed for the eggs. * * * The labor of incubation, like all other duties, is shared equally by the two sexes. * * *

All nests examined upon this occasion [an occasion when he found half a dozen nests] were of uniform gourd-like shape, with the sides very smoothly and evenly chiselled. They averaged about fourteen inches in depth by five in diameter at the widest point, while the diameter of the exterior hole varied from 1.25 to 1.60 inches. So small, indeed, was this entrance in proportion to the size of the bird, that in many cases they were obliged to struggle violently for several seconds in either going out or in. The nests in most instances were very easily discovered, as the bird was almost always in the immediate vicinity, and if the tree was approached would fly to the hole and utter a few low calls, which would bring out its sitting mate, when both would pass to and from the spot, emitting notes of anxiety and alarm. The bird not employed in incubation has also a peculiar habit of clinging to the trunk just below the hole, in a perfectly motionless and strikingly pensive attitude, apparently looking in, though from the conformation of the interior it would be impossible for it to see its mate or eggs. In this position it will remain without moving for many minutes at a time.

Henry Mousley (1916) states that the bird “often nests year after year in the same tree (but not necessarily in the same hole) the favourite ones here [Hatley, Quebec] being elm, poplar, and butternut. * * * Of two nests examined the average dimensions are as follows, viz.: entrance hole 1⅜ inches in diameter, extreme depth 10¾ inches, and width 2⅞ inches.”

Philipp and Bowdish (1917) say of the nesting site in New Brunswick: “The favorite situation was the dead heart of a live poplar, most often on the bank of a stream, and facing same, but some nests were in totally dead trees, of different kinds. They ranged from eight to forty feet from ground.”

Bendire (1895) says that the birds “are devoted parents, and when incubation is somewhat advanced, or the young have been recently hatched, the bird on the nest is loath to leave it, and will sometimes allow itself to be captured rather than to desert its treasures.”