DRYOBATES SCALARIS EREMICUS Oberholser
SAN FERNANDO WOODPECKER
HABITS
This race of ladder-backed woodpeckers occupies the northern half of Baja California, north of the range of Dryobates scalaris lucasanus, with which it intergrades about midway the peninsular. It is described by Dr. H. C. Oberholser (1911b) as “similar to Dryobates scalaris lucasanus, but larger; lower surface darker; upper parts darker, the white bars on back averaging narrower and less regular, the black bars wider; black bars on posterior lower parts averaging somewhat wider.”
Very little seems to have appeared in print about this woodpecker, but, as it lives in a similar habitat to that occupied by the San Lucas woodpecker, it probably does not differ materially from it in habits. It lives in the lowland, desert regions and nests in the giant cactus. Both races are said to be rather shy. It is replaced in extreme northwestern Baja California by Nuttall’s woodpecker and in the extreme northeast by the cactus woodpecker.
Griffing Bancroft (1930) states that the measurements of nine eggs of this subspecies average 21.7 by 16.7 millimeters.