34^ 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



This species is decidedly uncommon in this latitude, and one 

 may watch patiently for years without so much as getting a glimpse 

 of one, and when at last they do make their appearance it is not by 

 the hundred, as is apt to be the way with northern birds when they 

 see fit to visit us, but scattered singly about the woods and swamps 

 in a manner hardly calculated to attract attention. This is about 

 their southern limit though curiously enough a species almost iden- 

 tical with this one inhabits the forests of Guiana, while the inter- 

 mediate region can show nothing in the least like it. 



The coloring of the yellow-bellied woodpecker is somewhat more 

 complicated, the white being partly replaced by yellow, and the 

 throat and top of the head crimson. Autumn birds are frequently 



seen without any red Avhat- 

 ever, and with the entire 

 plumage so thickly 

 streaked and spotted as to 

 give an effect of dull gray- 

 ish brown in the distance. 

 They make their ap- 

 pearance with considerable 

 regularity in the spring, 

 about the middle of April 

 or a little before, singly or 

 in pairs, and seldom in 

 any great numbers. They 

 are decidedly rare 

 throughout the summer, 

 and are seldom very abun- 

 dant in the fall except in 

 certain seasons, when they 

 outnumber all the other 

 woodpeckers put together, 

 and may be seen in fam- 

 ilies of half a dozen or more, running about the hickory and 

 oak trees, which appear to be their favorites. Being much 

 more restless and impatient than the downy, they seldom linger 

 long in a place, but keep flying from tree to tree, pecking 

 here and there as suits their fancy, until, finding an especially 

 attractive spot or decayed branch, they settle down for a few moments 

 of hard work, and manage to do considerable execution in a com- 

 paratively short time. They are commonly called sapsuckers, and 

 are supposed to injure fruit trees by drilling little cup-shaped holes 

 in the bark in order to drink sap which flows from them. There is no 

 doubt that they make the holes, sometimes thousands of them in a 



PiLEATED Woodpecker. 



