In character of the markings on the feathers of the breast there is no departure from the condition in bairdi. The upper breast is broadly and solidly black, the black band not penetrated posteriorly with white streaks to such an extent as in aculeata and angustifrons.
The range is given as, “so far as now known, only parts of the Sierra San Pedro Martir, in northern Lower California, between latitudes 30° and 31°30″; altitude 5,800 to 7,200 feet; life-zone mainly Upper Sonoran (live-oak association), but also Transition locally or sporadically.”
The eggs are similar to those of other races of the species. The measurements of 12 eggs average 26.19 by 18.35 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 25.1 by 19.4, 19.0 by 18.5, and 22.8 by 16.8 millimeters.
ASYNDESMUS LEWIS (Gray)
LEWIS’S WOODPECKER
Plate [29]
HABITS
My first impression of this curious and interesting woodpecker was of a large, black bird that looked more like a crow than a woodpecker and that flew with the strong, steady flight of a crow or a jay, with none of the undulations common to so many woodpeckers. I made the same comment the second time I saw it, and am interested to see that the same impressions were made on many others.
It is essentially a bird of the more open country and among scattered large trees, rather than of the heavily forested regions. S. F. Rathbun writes to me of its haunts in western Washington: “In this section of the State are many tracts of land commonly known as ‘old burns.’ At one time all were forested, then later they were swept by fire and in some instances more than once; but even now, on many, still stand the scarred and blackened trunks of what formerly were large, tall trees; and it is in or about these unattractive places that this woodpecker is more apt to be found, although by no means is it restricted to them.”
Major Bendire (1895) says: “I have rarely seen Lewis’s woodpecker in deep forests; far more frequently just on the outskirts of the pines, in juniper groves on the table-lands bordering the pines, as well as in the deciduous timber along streams in the lowlands, and occasionally even in solitary cottonwoods or willows, near some little spring, in the drier sagebrush-covered flats, miles away from the nearest forest.”