24 The Bulletin. 



The Sapsucker's food consists in part of many varieties of such 

 wild berries as it is able to find in the autumn and winter. It 

 eats insects when these are accessible. Its chief diet, however, con- 

 sists of the inner layer of bark of a variety of trees and the sap which 

 it is enabled to collect by means of numerous small holes excavated 

 through the bark for this purpose. Among other trees, it is known 

 to attack the apple, sugar-maple, mountain ash, and hemlock. In 

 the spring of 1891 I watched with much care the actions of a Sap- 

 sucker, and the following brief account of what occurred is taken 

 from the writer's book, "Stories of Bird Life" : 



"For several years a Sapsucker (possibly not the same bird al- 

 ways) has each season visited a small balsam growing in a frequented 

 lawn near my home. In the autumn it begins its attack and a few 

 small holes are dug through the bark, but by far the larger amount 

 of his work is done in the spring. This year when the sap first 

 began to rise the Sapsucker came out of the woods and commenced 

 operations on the balsam. He is a wonderful carpenter, and the 

 way he made the chips fly with his sharp bill was astonishing. Hour 

 after hour he toiled on, cutting scores of holes through the bark 

 to the solid wood beyond. In a few days hundreds of these little wells 

 had been sunk and the sap rose in them in abundance. 



"The bird would cling to the side of the tree, braced by his tail, 

 and drink the sweet juice from the holes, one after another. As 

 they ran dry, day by day, other holes were chiseled. Usually these 

 openings were made in rings about the tree or in rows up and down 

 its side. I counted forty-two holes in one vertical line. These were 

 mostly about the size of a lead pencil, but a few were an inch and 

 a quarter long and three-fonrths of an inch wide. Some of the holes 

 are less than a foot from the ground and they occur at intervals 

 for twenty feet, or fully two-thirds the distance to the top. The 

 perforations were confined chiefly to the trunk of the tree, and in 

 only one case was a limb assailed. 



"During the month of March new holes were made daily and on 

 the 29th the bark showed 1,671 unhealed openings, which had been 

 made this spring. Hundreds of old scars bear mute testimony to the 

 workings of the Sapsucker in previous years." 



Trees which have been attacked by the bird sometimes die, but 

 the one referred to above is now (September, 1909) still alive and 

 flourishing. 



English Spakrow {Passer domesticus, Linn). 



General color suggests grayish chestnut ; back streaked with black ; top of 

 head gray and rump gray, whitish below, except throat and breast (in male 

 only) black. Length about 6% inches. 



Range. — A large part of Europe and Asia. Naturalized in America, New 

 Zealand, Japan, Australia, and elsewhere. 



Nest. — Sticks, twigs, grass, and feathers, and situated in any available place. 



Eggs. — Four to six, finely and evenly spotted. 



