Birds in Orchards 



By John Burroughs 



There are few places on the farm where there is so much live natural history 

 to be gathered as in the orchard. The trees bear a crop of birds, if not of apples, 

 every season. Few are the winged visitors from distant climes that do not, 

 sooner or later, tarry a bit in the orchard. Many birds, such as the robin, the 

 chippy, the humming-bird, the cedar-bird, the goldfinch, and some of the flycatch- 

 ers, nest there. The great-crested flycatcher loves the old hollow limbs, and the 

 little red owl often lives in a cavity in the trunk. The jays visit the orchard 

 on their piratical excursions in quest of bird's eggs, and now and then they 

 discover the owl in his retreat and set up a great hue and cry over their discovery. 

 On such occasions they will take turns in looking into the dim cavity and crying, 

 "Thief, thief !" most vociferously, the culprit meanwhile, apparently, sitting 

 wrapped in utter oblivion. 



In aVIay and June the cuckoo comes to the orchard for tent caterpillars, and the 

 woodpeckers come at all seasons — the downy and the hairy to the good of the 

 trees, the yellow-bellied often to their injury. The two former search for the 

 eggs and the larvse of the insects that infest the trees, as do the nuthatches and 

 the chickadees, which come quite as regularly, but the yellow-bellied come for 

 the life-blood of the trees themselves. He is popularly known as the "sap-sucker," 

 and a sap-sucker he is. Many apple trees in every orchard are pock-marked by 

 his bill, and occasionally a branch is evidently killed by his many and broad 

 drillings. As I write these lines, on September 26, in my bush-tent in one of 

 the home orchards, a sap-sucker is busy on a veteran apple tree, whose fruit 

 has often gone to school with me in my pockets during my boyhood days on 

 the farm. He goes about his work systematically, visiting one of the large 

 branches and then a portion of the trunk, and drilling his holes in rows about 

 one-quarter of an inch apart. Every square foot of the trunk contains from 

 three to four hundred holes, new and old. cut through into the inner vital cambium 

 layer. The holes are about the size of the end of a rye straw, and run in rings 

 around the tree, the rings being about half an inch apart. The newly cut ones 

 quickly fill with sap, which, to my tongue, has a rather insipid taste, but which 

 is evidently relished by the woodpecker. He drills two or three holes, then pauses 

 a moment, and when they are filled sips his apple tree tij^i^lc leisurely. The drain 

 upon the vitality of the tree at any one time, by this tapping, cannot be very 

 serious, but in the course of years must certainly aft'ect its vigor considerably. 

 I have seen it stated in print by a writer who evidently draws upon his fancy 

 for his facts, that in making these holes the bird is setting a trap for insects, and 

 that these arc what it feeds upon. I-?ut the bird is a sap-sucker; there are no 

 insects at his wells today: Ik- visits them vor\' regularly, and is constantly 



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