drilling new ones. His mate, or at least a female, comes, and I overhear the two 

 in soft, gentle conversation. When I appear upon the scene the female scurries 

 away in alarm, calling as she retreats, as if for the male to follow; but he does 

 not. He eyes me for a moment, and then sidles around behind the trunk of the 

 tree, and as I go back to my table I hear his hammer again. Very soon the 

 female is back and I hear their conversation going on as before. 



Day after day the male is here tapping the trees. His blows are soft and 

 can be heard only a few yards away. He evidently has his favorites. In this 

 orchard of twenty or more trees, only two are worked now, and only three have 

 ever been much worked. The two favorites bear hard, sour fruit. The bark 

 of a sweet apple tree does not show a single hole. A grafted tree shows no 

 holes on the original stock, but many punctures on the graft. One day I saw 

 the bird frequently leave his drilling on one tree and go to another, drilling into 

 a small red apple which had lodged amid some twigs on a horizontal branch ; 

 he ate the pulp and had made quite a large hole in the apple, when it became 

 dislodged and fell to the ground. It is plain, therefore, that the sap-sucker likes 

 the juice of the apple, and of the tree that bears the apple. He is the only orchard 

 bird who is a tippler. Among the forest trees, he sucks the sap of the sugar 

 maples, in spring, and I have seen evidence of his having drilled into small white 

 pines, cutting out an oblong section from the bark, apparently to get at the soft 

 cambium layer. 



Red-Headed Woodpecker {Melanerpes ertkrocephalus) 

 By Florence Merriam Bailey 



Length, 9^ inches. 



Range : Common throughout Eastern North America. 



The Woodpeckers are a band of foresters most of whom spend their lives 

 saving trees. Many of them do their work hidden in the dark forests, but the 

 Red-heads hunt largely out in plain sight of passers-by. Why? Because, while 

 they devour enough enemies of the trees to deserve the name of foresters, they 

 are particularly fond of vegetable foods and large beetles found in the open. 



Watch one of the handsome Red-headed birds on a fence. Down he drops 

 to pick up an ant or a grasshopper from the ground ; then up he shoots to catch 

 a wasp or beetle in the air. Nor does he stop with fly-catching. Nutting — beech- 

 nutting — is one of his favorite pastimes ; while berries, fruits, and seeds are all 

 to his taste. If, in his appreciation of the good things that man offers, the Red- 

 head on rare occasions takes a bit more cultivated fruit or berries than his rightful 

 share, his attention should be diverted by planting some of his favorite wild 

 fruits, such as dogwood, mulberry, elderberry, chokecherry, or wild black cherry. 



But, in judging of what is a bird's fair share of man's crops, many things 

 should be considered. Food is bought for the canary and other house pets ; and 



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