196 Birds Every Child Should Know 



sapholes. When not alarmed, his only movement 

 was from one row of holes to another, and he 

 tended them with considerable regularity. As 

 the day wore on he became less excitable, and 

 clung cloddishly to his tree trunk with ever in- 

 creasing torpidity, until finally he hung motion- 

 less as if intoxicated, tippling in sap, a 

 dishevelled, smutty, silent bird, stupefied with 

 drink, with none of that brilliancy of plumage 

 and light-hearted gaiety which made him the 

 noisiest and most conspicuous bird of our 

 April woods." 



But it must be admitted that very rarely does 

 the sapsucker girdle a tree with holes enough to 

 sap away its life. He may have an orgie of in- 

 temperance once in awhile, but much should be 

 forgiven a bird as dexterous as a flycatcher in 

 taking insects on the wing and with a hearty 

 appetite for pests. Wild fruit and soft-shelled 

 nuts he likes too. He never bores a tree to get 

 insects as his cousins do, for only when a nest 

 must be chiselled out is he a wood pecker in the 

 strict sense. 



You may know this erring one by the pale, 

 sulphur-yellow tinge on his white under parts, 

 the white patch above the tail on his mottled 

 black and white back, his spotted wings with 

 conspicuous white coverts, the broad black patch 

 on his breast extending to the comers of his 

 mouth in a chin strap, and the lines of crimson 



