BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 213 



no. Sphyrapicus varius (Linn.). 



Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Sapsucker. Yellow-bellied Woodpecker. 



Transient visitor, not uncommon in spring and autumn ; occasionally seen in winter. 



seasonal occurrence. 



April II, 1899, one seen, Arlington, W. Faxon. 



April 24 — May i . 

 May 5, 1877, one female ' taken, Cambridge, C. F. Batchelder. 



September 10, 1899, one seen, Cambridge, W. Brewster. 

 September 15 — November i. (Winter.) 



On January i, 1862, my friend Mr. Daniel C. French called at our house 

 to give me my first lesson in taxidermy, an art known in those days to but few 

 persons save the professional 'bird stuff ers.' I was naturally eager to take advan- 

 tage of this opportunity, but it was first necessary to procure a bird not too 

 small nor delicate for inexperienced fingers. By chance a suitable subject was 

 speedily provided, for just as we were about to start, with our guns, for some 

 distant woods, a Sapsucker alighted on the trunk of a butternut tree close 

 to the house and was at once shot. If I remember rightly it was a young bird, 

 but the specimen was destroyed by moths some ten or fifteen years later. It 

 was the only Sapsucker that I have ever seen in Massachusetts in winter, but 

 one was killed in the Botanic Garden, Cambridge, on December i, 1883, by Mr. 

 George N. Lamb, and another was noted in Waverley on December 24, 1885, by 

 Dr. Arthur P. Chadbourne, while Mr. Frederic H. Kennard has reported ^ find- 

 ing one in Brookline on February 6, 1895. 



Although the Sapsucker is accustomed to visit the Cambridge Region very 

 regularly at its seasons of migration, it is seldom or never seen here in any con- 

 siderable numbers. It occurs oftenest in April and October, and is most likely 

 to be met with in dense mixed woods, especially those which contain pitch pines. 

 It also appears familiarly in apple orchards near farmhouses and about cultivated 

 grounds in the suburbs of our cities and larger towns, where it does some 

 damage to such trees as the Austrian pine and mountain ash by drilling holes 

 through their bark to obtain the sap. While thus engaged it sometimes lingers 

 for days in succession in our garden, and I have notes of its recent occurrence 

 in other equally densely populated parts of Cambridge. 



iNo. 246, collection of C. F. Batchelder. 

 'F. H. Kennard, Auk, XII, 1S95, 301-302. 



