ALPINE THREE-TOED WOODPECKER
HABITS
This race of the three-toed woodpeckers enjoys the most southern distribution of any of the birds of this genus, ranging from northern Montana to northern Arizona and New Mexico, in the boreal forests of the Rocky Mountains. Ridgway (1914) characterizes it as “similar to white-backed examples of P. a. fasciatus, but larger; white markings on back usually all longitudinal (very rarely with any transverse bars of black), white supra-auricular streak usually broader, forehead usually with more black and less whitish spotting, white spots or bars on inner web of innermost secondaries larger, and sides and flanks usually less barred with black.”
The Weydemeyers (1928) say that in northwestern Montana, “unlike arcticus, this species prefers dense, virgin forests to cut-over woods and open woodland pastures. * * * In the higher elevations, this woodpecker may be found in white pine, lodgepole pine, alpine fir, and Engelmann spruce forests. In the Transition zone, it shows a preference for spruce woods, with larch and yellow pine forests as second choice. In the Canadian zone, this species is somewhat commoner than arcticus; in the Transition zone, it occurs only about one-third as frequently as does the larger bird.”
M. P. Skinner says, in his Yellowstone National Park notes: “This woodpecker is rather uncommon, but I have seen it in coniferous forests between 6,500 and 8,000 feet, in firs, lodgepole pine, and Engelmann spruce. I have also seen it on dead trees and on telephone poles. I have seen this woodpecker in this Park only between May and October.”
Nesting.—At an altitude of about 9,000 feet in the mountains of Colorado, in or near Estes Park, John H. Flanagan (1911) collected a set of four eggs of the alpine three-toed woodpecker. “The hole was in an aspen stub, nine feet from the ground and about a foot or eighteen inches from the top, and just before the guide reached the hole the bird flew out. * * *
“The entrance to the nesting cavity was about one and one-half inches in diameter; the cavity itself about nine or ten inches in depth and quite large at the bottom. The eggs were laid on a few chips.”
In north-central Colorado, Edwin R. Warren (1912) found a nest of this woodpecker “in a dead Engelmann spruce, which was twenty-five inches in diameter at the base, and twenty at the nest hole, the latter being seven feet above ground. The nest was eight inches deep, the entrance one and three-quarters inches in diameter; the thickness of the wood on the front side of the hole was two and three-quarters inches, and the cavity was five inches from front to back, and three wide. There were a few chips in the bottom, as well as a few of the birds’ droppings. There were two young, about ready to fly, though I had no difficulty in posing them on the tree for pictures; they showed little or no fear.”
Randolph Jenks (1934) discovered two nests of the alpine three-toed woodpecker on the Kaibab Plateau, near the east rim of the Grand Canyon, in northern Arizona. One was in “a hole in an aspen tree, two and one-half inches in diameter, opening to the southeast, twelve feet from the ground. The cavity was eight inches deep and the nest was lined with a thick layer of maggot-infested sawdust. In spite of the crawling competitors, the nestlings, a male and a female, seemed quite contented.” This was on June 30, 1931. Several days later another nest was found, also on the Plateau, at an elevation of 8,100 feet; this nest was “in a hole about sixty feet above the ground in a western yellow pine.”
Dr. Edgar A. Mearns (1890b) writes: