He is a sturdy little fellow, and in flight will sometimes rise high in air and fly long and steadily, dipping only slightly over the brush. He has the full strength of his convictions and will drive a big flicker from a sycamore and then stretch up on a branch and call out triumphantly. Two Nuttalls trying to decide whether to fight are an amusing sight. They shake their feathers and scold and dance about as if they were aching to fly at each other, but couldn’t quite make up their minds to so grave a matter. _Voice._--The same writer says of the voice of Nuttall’s woodpecker: “At times the small Nuttall waxes excited, and shakes his wings as he gives his thin, rattling call. All his notes are thin, and his _quee-quee-quee-quee’p_ has a sharp quality. His _chit’ tah_ is a diminutive of the _ja’ cob_ of the California woodpecker.” Ralph Hoffmann (1927) says: “One cannot remain long near a grove of live oaks in the foothills of California without hearing from some tree a hoarse ringing call _prrip_, often lengthened to a rattling _prrrrrrt_. It has the exclamatory quality of the Hairy Woodpecker’s, but is less clear and metallic, with more burr. * * * Like the other woodpeckers the Nuttall, particularly in spring, drums on resonant timber or telephone poles; it also gives at that season a rapid, squealing _quee quee quee quee_.” Mr. Dawson (1923) says that this woodpecker “always has a grouch on, and you are sure to be challenged as you pass, by repetition of his double notes of distrust, _ticket, ticket--ticket it_.” _Field marks._--Nuttall’s woodpecker closely resembles the cactus woodpecker, and where the ranges of the two species come together, in southeastern California, there is a chance for confusion; but their ranges barely touch each other, and fortunately the habitats of the two species are quite different and mainly well separated. Nuttall’s is somewhat lighter colored on the under parts, and the black bands on the back are slightly wider than in the cactus woodpecker; but the best distinguishing mark, if the observer is near enough to see it, is the black forehead and front of the crown, which in the male cactus woodpecker is spotted with white and red. It is only slightly larger than the downy woodpeckers but can be readily distinguished from that species by the conspicuous, transverse barring of black and white on the back, instead of the broad, white, longitudinal band of the downies; there are also more white spots in the wings than in the western races of the downy. DISTRIBUTION _Range._--Southwestern Oregon, California, and northern Baja California; nonmigratory.