This woodpecker, which seems to be confined to the Cape Region proper, is exceedingly abundant throughout the pine forests on the higher mountains south of La Paz and common in many places in the oaks at the bases of the mountains and among their foot-hills, ranging downward, according to Mr. Belding, to an elevation of about 700 feet. Mr. Frazar found it most numerous on the Sierra de la Laguna, during the last week of April and the first week of May. After that its numbers decreased perceptibly. It began breeding on this mountain the first week in June, but the breeding season was not at its height until the middle of that month. * * *
Only one specimen was seen at Triunfo during the last two weeks of June, but the bird was common and presumably breeding at Pierce’s Ranch in July. At the latter place it fairly swarmed in December, the resident colony being probably augmented by large numbers of winter visitors from La Laguna, where Mr. Frazar found only a few birds lingering in late November and early December. Along the road between San José del Cabo and Miraflores it was seen in considerable numbers on November 15, and three were observed in some evergreen oaks at Santiago on November 23.
Nesting.—There is a set of four eggs in the Thayer collection, apparently the same set referred to by Mr. Brewster, collected by M. Abbott Frazar in the Sierra de la Laguna, on June 3, 1887; the nest is described as 10 feet up in a dead pine stump; the entrance measured 1¾ inches in diameter, and the cavity was 18 inches deep. The measurements of these 4 eggs are 24.13 by 19.05, 22.61 by 19.56, 22.61 by 19.30, and 23.88 by 18.80 millimeters.
The food and general habits of this woodpecker do not seem to differ materially from those of the species elsewhere. It has similar acorn-storing habits, for Mr. Frazar found “many dead pines literally stuffed full of acorns.”
BALANOSPHYRA FORMICIVORA ACULEATA (Mearns)
MEARNS’S WOODPECKER
Plate [28]
HABITS
Along our southwestern border, from Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas southward over northwestern Mexico to Durango, we find this race of ant-eating woodpecker. It was separated, named, and described by Dr. Edgar A. Mearns (1890a) as follows: “General size and coloring intermediate between M. formicivorus and M. formicivorus bairdi; throat less yellow than in either of them; bill shorter, more slender, and less arcuate than in either of the other forms of M. formicivorus; white striping of chest more than in the Pacific coast form, less than in formicivorus.”
He says of its haunts (1890b): “A very common resident through the pine belt, breeding plentifully. I have found it as high as the spruce forests, but never in them. It is essentially a bird of the pines, only occasionally descending to the cottonwoods of the low valleys. The oaks which are scattered through the lower pine zone supply a large share of its food.”