160 BIRDS THROUGH AN OPERA-GLASS. 
between shingles on the roofs of houses; and in 
several instances when their store-house was full, 
the woodpeckers would take the precaution to 
roof it over with a layer of empty hulls, or bits 
of wood and bark. 
XLVIII. 
YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER. 
In the spring the yellow-bellied woodpecker is 
a mercurial Frenchman compared with the sober, 
self-contained Englishmen, his cousins, the hairy 
and downy. ‘They contrast as scarlet and gray. 
Even their dress marks them. The hairy and 
downy are robed like grave philosophers in black 
and white, the old fathers merely donning a red 
cap for dignity. But though the sapsucker has 
to be content with a mottled black and white coat, 
besides a red cap, he wears a crimson frontlet, a 
bib-shaped piece of crimson satin fastened close 
under his chin, and bordering this a cirelet of 
black satin, below which, and falling to his feet, 
is his pale yellow robe. 
In April and May, especially during courting, 
the air is full of his boisterous cries. In the edge 
of the woods, in the orchard, by the side of the 
house, the excited birds flicker from tree to tree, 
chasing each other about. Sometimes two of 
them march up opposite sides of the same tree, 
= aoe 
