A young bird is not appreciably different from the adult.
Habits. Dr. Cooper regards this bird as quite a rare species. He has never met with it, and doubts if it is ever found so far south as San Francisco.
Mr. J. G. Bell, of New York, was the first to meet with this bird in the Lower Sierra Nevada.
Dr. Heermann procured specimens among the southern mines, near the Colorado River, where they were especially frequenting the pine-trees in search of their food. He saw none of them alight on an oak, though those trees were abundant in that locality. It has since been met with near Fort Crook, and Dr. Cooper thinks it probable they may be more common in the mountains of Eastern Oregon and in those of Central Utah.
Dr. Coues says that it is resident, but very rare, in Arizona. It frequents pine-trees by preference. Its range is said to include both slopes of the Rocky Mountains, from Oregon to the Rio Grande, and probably to Sonora.
Mr. Ridgway met with this rare Woodpecker on the Sierra Nevada and Wahsatch Mountains, where it inhabited the same woods with the S. williamsoni; it appeared to have the same manners and notes as that species, but it was so seldom met with that nothing satisfactory could be learned concerning its habits. Its conspicuously barred coloration gives it much the appearance of a Centurus, when flying.
Genus HYLOTOMUS, Baird.
Dryotomus, Malherbe, Mém. Ac. Metz, 1849, 322. (Not of Swainson, 1831.)
Dryopicus, Bonap. Consp. Zygod. in Aten. Ital. May, 1854. (Not of Malherbe.)
Hylatomus, Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 107. (Type, Picus pileatus.)