little wells do triple service. According to Professor Butler, an observer 
in Indiana, Mrs. J. L. Hine, once watched a Sapsucker in early spring 
for seven hours at a stretch, and during this time the bird did not move 
above a yard from a certain maple tap from which it drank at intervals. 
Orchard trees suffer occasionally from this bird’s depredations, but 
the sap of pine or fir trees is its favorite diet and available the year 
around. 
In nesting the Red-naped Sapsucker shows a marked preference for 
aspen trees and its summer range is practically confined to their vicinity. 
A nest found on the banks of the Pend d’Oreille, opposite Ione, was placed 
twenty-five feet up in an aspen tree some sixteen inches in diameter. The 
tree was dead at the heart but there was an outer shell of live wood two 
inches in thickness. The bird had penetrated this outer shell with a tunnel 
as round as an augur-hole, and an inch and a half in diameter, and had 
excavated in the soft heart-wood a chamber ten inches deep vertically, five 
and a half horizontally, and three from front to back. Here five eggs, “‘as 
fresh as paint,” reposed on the rotten chips. Like all, or most, Woodpecker 
eggs, these were beautifully transparent, with the position of the contained 
yolk clearly indicated. One egg was broken with a small round hole, as 
tho a careless claw had been stuck into it. 
The parent birds, especially the male, who was caught on the eggs as 
tho inspecting the latest achievement, were very attentive, flying back and 
forth in neighboring trees, and giving utterance to the keé ah and other notes. 
After my descent from the ruined home, the male alighted beside the hole 
and tapped at the edges, as tho seeking in the sound of the wood explana- 
tion of the disaster. 
No. 172. 
RED-BREASTED SAPSUCKER. 
A. O. U. No. 403. Sphyrapicus ruber (Gmel.). 
Synonym.—RED-BREASTED \WOODPECKER. 
Description — Adult male: Somewhat as in preceding but distinctive mark- 
ings of head and neck and chest nearly obliterated by all-prevailing carmine which 
reaches well down on breast; marks alluded to most persistent in anterior portion 
of transverse (white) cheek-stripe and in black of lores; breast (posterior to 
carmine) and remaining underparts strongly suffused with yellow; white spotting 
of upperparts greatly reduced in area and oftenest tinged with yellow; white 
wing-bar fully persistent but often yellow-tinged—thus an evolved form of S. v. 
nuchalis, with which males are said to exhibit every degree of gradation. Adult 
