266 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 



wells. Orehaj?ds No. 1 and No. 2 were deserted 

 in or after 1891, their trees for the most part 

 being dead, or so nearly dead as to be unattrac- 

 tive to the sapsuckers. A few rods from No. 2, 

 a new orchard was observed by me in 1892. It 

 may be a direct continuation of No. 2, but as 

 all the woodpeckers at No. 2 were supposed to 

 have been shot in 1890, the chances are that it is 

 a new settlement. In July, 1893, twenty gray 

 birches within an area a hundred feet square 

 had been scarred by the woodpeckers. About 

 half of these were dead, and out of the entire 

 number only four trees were newly drilled and 

 sap-yielding. In many ways this orchard proved 

 to be the most interesting I have watched. 

 The family of sapsuckers using it was not pug- 

 nacious, and in consequence other birds visited 

 it much more freely than is generally the case. 

 Downy woodpeckers occasionally sipped at its 

 fountains ; black-and-white creeping warblers 

 regularly, though warily, visited its insect hoards, 

 and during the autumn migration of 1892 a pair 

 of yellow-breasted flycatchers spent many days 

 in constant attendance upon its trees, around 

 which countless insects fluttered or hummed. 



The four sap-yielding trees at this orchard 

 appeared in July, 1893, to have been appropri- 

 ated, subject to the prior claims of the wood- 

 peckers, by three humming-birds, a female and 



