THE YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER 



called down anathemas upon all his tribe. He does more 

 damage in some localities than others. Mr. Forbush re- 

 ports tliat while the sapsucker has undoubtedly killed trees 

 in northern New England where he breeds, yet in thirty 

 years he has done no appreciable harm in Massachusetts. 



Dr. Henry Henshaw, formerly Qiief of the Biological 

 Survey, writes: "The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, unlike 

 other woodpeckers, does comparatively little good and 

 much harm." Mr. Henshaw reports 250 kinds of trees 

 known to have been attacked by sapsuckers and left with 

 "girdles of holes" or "blemishes known as bird-pecks, 

 especially numerous in hickory, oak, cypress, and yellow 

 poplar." * 



The experience of Dr. Sylvester Judd at Marshall Hall, 

 Maryland, was as follows: "In the summer of 1895 

 there was on the Bryan farm a little orchard of nine ap- 

 ple trees, about twelve years old, tliat appeared perfectly 

 healthy. In the fall sapsuckers tapped them in many 

 places, and during spring and fall of the next four years 

 they resorted to them regularly for supplies of sap. Ob- 

 servations were made (October 15, 1896) of two sap- 

 suckers in adjoining trees of the orchard. From a point 

 twenty feet distant they were watched for three hours with 

 powerful glasses to see whether they fed to any consider- 

 able extent on ants or other insects that were running over 

 the tree-trunks. In that time one bird seized an ant and 

 the other snapped at some flying insect. One drank sap 

 from the holes thirty and the other forty-one times. Later 

 in the day, one drilled two new holes and the other five. 

 The holes were made in more or less regular rings about 

 the trunk, one ring close above another, for a distance of 



1 Farmers' Bulletin 513, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Biological Survey. 



[137] 



