128 BULLETIN 174, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



and at the intervals between their sailings and the flappings of their wings, 

 emitting their remarkable plaintive cries. When alighting towards sunset, they 

 descended with amazing speed in a tortuous manner, and first settled on the 

 tops of the highest trees, where they remained perfectly silent for awhile, after 

 which they betook themselves to the central parts of the thickest trees, and 

 searched along the trunks for abandoned holes of Squirrels or Woodpeckers, 

 in which they spent the night, several together in the same hole. 



A. B. Kliigli (1909) reports a remarkably large gathering of sap- 

 suckers on their northward migration. He says : 



On the morning of April 17th, 1909, the city of Kingston, Ontario, was alive 

 with yellow-bellied sapsuckers. 



From my study window I saw some twenty of them on the trees at the 

 lodge of the park and on going out to investigate I found from one to four 

 on nearly every tree. As a conservative estimate I placed the number of birds 

 in the park at three hundred. * * * 



The probable cause of this immense wave of yellow-bellied sapsuckers striking 

 Kingston lies in the strong gale from the north which was blowing on the 

 night of April 16th, the birds apparently dropping as soon as they had crossed 

 the lake. 



Courtship. — ^Little has been recorded on the courtship of the yel- 

 low-bellied sapsucker, but we may get a hint of its early stages at 

 least as the birds pass northward — the increased interest in each 

 other shown by their lively pursuits and their rapid whirlings among 

 the branches, as noted under "Spring." 



George Miksch Sutton (1928b) speaks thus of the birds on their 

 nesting ground in Pennsylvania : "In late Llay and June the mewing 

 cry was familiar and they occasionally indulged in strange court- 

 ship antics, flashing through the tops of the trees, calling excitedly 

 in tones resembling those of a flicker, and dancing about with wings 

 and tail spread in a manner utterly foreign to the usually stolid 

 bearing of migrant individuals." 



Of the spring drumming, perhaps a part of courtship. Dr. Harry 

 C. Oberholser (1896b) says: 



In spring the drumming of the yellow-bellied sapsucker may usually be easily 

 recognized by the following peculiarities. Four or five taps given in quick suc- 

 cession are followed by a short pause, this being soon succeeded by two short 

 quick taps; then another pause, and two more taps in somewhat less rapid 

 succession than the first; followed by yet another pause, and two additional 

 taps still a little slower. This is sometimes slightly varied with regard to 

 the number of taps; and occasionally also the latter part consists only of 

 single quick taps with an Increasing interval toward the last. 



The difference between the tapping of the sapsucker and of the 

 hairy and the downy woodpecker is described in the life history of 

 the latter bird. Wendell Taber told Mr. Bent that he succeeded in 

 calling up three of these birds by imitating their drumming with a 

 fountain pen on a dead tree; one of them alighted on the tree on 

 which he was drumming. 



