Very little seems to have appeared in print about this woodpecker, but, as it lives in a similar habitat to that occupied by the San Lucas woodpecker, it probably does not differ materially from it in habits. It lives in the lowland, desert regions and nests in the giant cactus. Both races are said to be rather shy. It is replaced in extreme northwestern Baja California by Nuttall’s woodpecker and in the extreme northeast by the cactus woodpecker. Griffing Bancroft (1930) states that the measurements of nine eggs of this subspecies average 21.7 by 16.7 millimeters. DRYOBATES NUTTALLI (Gambel) NUTTALL’S WOODPECKER PLATES 11, 12 HABITS Though closely resembling, superficially, the ladder-backed woodpeckers of the _scalaris_ group, Nuttall’s woodpecker is a very distinct species; the ranges of the two species come together at several points but do not overlap; and the habitats of the two are in different types of environment. The 1931 A. O. U. Check-List gives the range of _nuttalli_ as “Upper Austral Zone west of the southern Cascade Mountains and the Sierra Nevada from southern Oregon to northwestern Lower California.” W. Leon Dawson (1923) described the haunts of this woodpecker very well, as follows: Although one who is forming the acquaintance of the Nuttall Woodpecker soon learns where to look for him, his range is hard to characterize in terms of associations. Upper Sonoran, foothill, oak, live oak, chaparral, deciduous trees bordering narrow stream beds--all these apply to _nuttalli_ well enough, but they are not exhaustive, save for the first, which is all inclusive. Within Upper Sonoran limits it is, perhaps, easier to tell where he will not be found; thus, not (or only occasionally) in pine timber; not in stands of pure willow (which are given over to _D. pubescens turati_); not in orchards, nor about cultures of any sort; not, most decidedly, “nesting in giant cactus.” Least of all, is it “seldom found along streams,” as one precocious authority avers. A narrow canyon whose floor harbors sycamores and alders and bay trees, nourished by a purling stream, and whose sides are lined with live oaks which run up into ceanothus chaparral, is precisely the best place to look for _D. nuttalli_. _Nesting._--Major Bendire (1895) quotes the following contribution from B. T. Gault: