This large, white-breasted hairy woodpecker inhabits the Rocky Mountain region, in the Canadian and Transition Zones, from central British Columbia and Montana southward to eastern Utah and northern New Mexico, and eastward to western South Dakota and western Nebraska. Ridgway (1914) characterizes it as “similar, in large size and whiteness of under parts, to _D. v. septentrionalis_, but with white spots on wing-coverts much reduced in size or number, or altogether wanting.” It evidently intergrades with _septentrionalis_ in Montana and Wyoming and probably with the more western races west of the Rocky Mountains. Milton P. Skinner tells me that in the Yellowstone National Park it “occurs at all elevations from the lowest at 5,500 feet to timberline at 9,500 feet above sea level, but never far from a tree of some kind. It is a resident bird here but moves down from the mountain heights at the approach of winter.” Aretas A. Saunders (1921) says of its status in Montana: “A common permanent resident throughout the western half of the state in the mountains. Winters mainly in the valleys in cottonwood groves, but does not breed there. * * * The eastern limits of its range are evidently in the eastern foothills of the mountains. Just what form breeds in the more eastern mountain ranges is not definitely determined. In the mountains this bird has been recorded by all observers. It is common everywhere, and usually the commonest of the mountain woodpeckers.” _Nesting._--The following remarks by Major Bendire (1895), under _hyloscopus_, evidently refer to this subspecies: “Mr. Denis Gale found it breeding in Boulder County, Colorado, on May 28, 1886, in a live aspen tree, at an altitude of about 8,500 feet. The nest contained five eggs, in which incubation was somewhat advanced. Mr. William G. Smith also reports it as common in Colorado, coming down into the valleys in winter. He says it is the earliest of the Woodpeckers to breed, that it commences nesting in the latter part of April, and usually excavates its holes in old dead pines, frequently at a considerable distance from the ground, and that he has seen full-grown young by June 1.” J. K. Jensen (1923) says of this woodpecker, in northern Santa Fe County, N. Mex.: Quite common in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, from 8,000 to 11,000 feet. June 21, 1920, I found a nest thirty feet up in a large quaking aspen. This tree stands on the edge of a place where an avalanche has plowed its way down through the timber on the mountain side, depositing trees and rocks in a great heap for hundreds of feet around the tree. The nest contained young, and judging from the noise they made, were quite well developed. The parent birds were very noisy.