The flight of these birds is strong and undulating, with fast beating wings, and generally only from one tree to the next. Where the trees are not very close together, they swoop down to within a few feet of the ground and then fly with nearly level flight until they glide up to their next stopping place. Where they have to fly out across intervening open fields their flight becomes more undulatory, at times deeply so.
DRYOBATES VILLOSUS HARRISI (Audubon)
HARRIS’S WOODPECKER
HABITS
The range of this well-marked subspecies is now restricted to the humid coast belt from southern British Columbia southward to Humboldt County, Calif. In 1895, Bendire wrote:
Until within the last few years all the Hairy Woodpeckers from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast have been considered as belonging to this subspecies. * * *
The breeding range of this race, as now considered, is a very limited one, and is probably coextensive with its geographical distribution. It is apparently confined to the immediate vicinity of the coast, and is not found at any great distance inland. Among the specimens collected by me at Fort Klamath, Oregon (mostly winter birds), there are two which might be called intermediates between this and the more recently separated Dryobates villosus hyloscopus, but the majority are clearly referable to the latter. In the typical Harris’s woodpecker the under parts are much darker, a smoky brown, in fact; it is also somewhat larger and very readily distinguishable from the much lighter-colored and somewhat smaller Cabanis’s woodpecker.
Dawson and Bowles (1909) say: “Doctor Cooper judged the Harris to be the most abundant Woodpecker in Western Washington; and this, with the possible exception of the Flicker (Colaptes cafer saturatior), is still true. The bird ventures well out upon the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains, and is found sparingly in the higher mountain valleys; but its favorite resorts are burns and the edges of clearings, rather than the depths of the woods.”
Johnson A. Neff (1928) quotes Dr. I. N. Gabrielson as saying: “The Harris woodpecker is found throughout western Oregon from the western slope of the Cascades to the coast, altho in the Rogue River Valley some specimens which are close to ‘orius’ have been taken. I have one labeled ‘orius’ by Dr. H. C. Oberholser, also have typical Harris from this district, so that this is probably the region of intergradation between these two forms.”