Doubtless a few downy woodpeckers move southward in autumn or early in winter, especially from the northern part of the bird’s range. Dr. Charles W. Townsend in his Ipswich notes (MS.) says that he sees “evident migrants not uncommonly in October and November.” But most of our birds spend the whole year round with us, and in autumn we may watch them as they make provision for winter. Even before the leaves are off the trees--in September here in New England--we may hear, day after day as we pass a certain tree, the tapping of a downy woodpecker where, invisible from the ground, high up on a branch, it is digging out a cavity, its roosting hole, in which it will sleep alone through the long winter nights, and into which it may retreat in the daytime whenever “the frost-wind blows.” DRYOBATES PUBESCENS NELSONI Oberholser NELSON’S DOWNY WOODPECKER HABITS This large race of the downy woodpecker inhabits the wooded regions of northern Alaska and northern Canada, intergrading with _Dryobates pubescens medianus_ in southern Canada and possibly in northern New England. Dr. H. C. Oberholser (1896a), in describing and naming it, characterizes it as “similar to _Dryobates pubescens_ [=_medianus_], but averaging larger; the under parts pure white instead of brownish; the lower tail-coverts and outer tail-feathers averaging with much less of black markings; red nuchal band of male averaging somewhat wider.” Swainson and Richardson (1831) say: “This diminutive but exceedingly industrious Woodpecker is a constant inhabitant of the fur-countries up to the fifty-eighth parallel. It seeks its food principally on the maple, elm, and ash, and, north of latitude 54°, where these trees terminate, on the aspen and birch. Its researches are made mostly, if not wholly, on live trees.” Dr. E. W. Nelson (1887) writes: Throughout the Territory [Alaska] where woodland or a growth of bushes and small trees occurs the present bird is certain to be found, and is a resident winter and summer. It has been taken along the entire course of the Yukon as well as at various points on the coast of Bering Sea, and thence south at Kadiak and Sitka. In autumn it is a rather common visitant to the coast of Norton Sound in spite of the lack of timber, and it was not uncommon to see it clinging to the sides of the houses, or to the flagstaff, and other similar supports; after resting awhile, and, perhaps, tapping a few times on the unproductive logs, they would leave for a more promising field. They were seen at times passing from one alder patch to another, on the hill-sides, and they follow the spruces and other trees to the shore of the sea.