432 



NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



not stop to consider the trifling injury tlicy may cause l»y, in a few exceptional cases, 

 boring holes in the weather-boarding of houses in order to store their acorns away, 

 or digging brceiling-holes in wooden ehurch-steeples; l)Ut there is one small grouj) of 

 woodjieekers which, on account of their organization and their chief food, may be 

 regarded as perhaps mostly injurious — viz., the so-called sapsuckers (^Sphyrapicus). 

 In these, tlie hyoid bones are not so excessively elongated, and the tongue couse- 

 ijuently is protrusible only in a very slight degree. The tij) is also differently armed, 

 being sirai)ly brushed and not barbed, — features ■whicli indicate that the food of 

 these birds is different from the rest of the woodpeckers, consisting as it chiefly does 

 of the sap of the trees. The late Dr. Alfred E. Brehni was an enthusiastic defender of 



■f 



Fig. 217. — Jy7ix torquilla, wryneck. 



the woodpeckers. When, two years ago, shortly before his death, he visited this 

 country, as we were standing at the entrance to the Smithsonian Institution, nearly 

 driven to despair by the incessant din of the English s})arrows which tried to drown 

 our voices, he asked me to .show him a characteristic American binl. Just at that 

 moment a bird alighted on the trunk of the nearest tree, and I liad the satisfaction of 

 ))ointing out to him our common yellow-bellied sap-sucker {S. iHtriiis). As the bird 

 reached tlic first branch, it thrust its bill into the smooth bark, leaving a s(]uare hole, 

 easily visible from the moist sa]) which made it look dark against the dusty surface; 

 and tap-la]i-ta]vtap, -with an astonishing regularity and in a most business-like manner, 

 the little fellow i)unctured the trunk horizontally and vertically until the tree looked 

 as if it had suffered from small-pox, and 'Bird' Brelim, wlio had watched the per- 



