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Life histories of North American woodpeckers

Chapter 29: LOWER CALIFORNIA HAIRY WOODPECKER
By Arthur Cleveland Bent
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Nature/Gardening/AnimalsScience - Biology

About This Book

A systematic, species-by-species compilation presents detailed life histories of North American woodpeckers, covering recognized subspecies and summarizing geographic ranges. For each taxon it describes plumage and molt sequences, habits of feeding, breeding behavior, nesting sites, egg characteristics with condensed egg-date data, and seasonal movements. Measurements, references to contributors, and methodology for compiling distribution paragraphs and egg records are included, along with brief notes to avoid duplication among subspecies. Color and egg-shape nomenclature follow standard references, and the work emphasizes observational records and museum data assembled from many contributors.

DRYOBATES VILLOSUS SCRIPPSAE Huey

LOWER CALIFORNIA HAIRY WOODPECKER

HABITS

Laurence M. Huey (1927) who described and named this woodpecker, characterized it as “similar to Dryobates villosus hyloscopus Cabanis and Heine, but decidedly smaller. In fully adult birds, the dusky white of the breast extends farther down on the breast than does that on examples from the northern mountains.” He gives, as its range, “the pine clad slopes of the Sierra Juarez and Sierra San Pedro Martir, Lower California, Mexico. * * * The range of this southern race does not extend north of the International Boundary, as specimens examined from the mountains of San Diego County, California, are in no way inclined toward the race D. v. scrippsae, but are counterparts of typical D. v. hyloscopus from the northern localities. In fact, the only variation that could point toward a ‘blending’ is found in the Sierra Juarez birds, but their average falls so near that of the birds from the Sierra San Pedro Martir that the name proposed herewith should apply.”

This southern race probably does not differ materially in its habits from other hairy woodpeckers, except in so far as it is affected by its environment.