280 THE BIRDS OF MAINE 



during the mating season. They "drum" very frequently and 

 keep it up for a prolonged period. The call of the young is 

 a peculiar mewing purr, and nests with young are easily located 

 at such times as they are all vociferously demanding food. 

 Except when excavating for the nest this species rarely digs 

 into rotten woods like the other Woodpeckers, and its insect 

 food consists more of such species as it picks up from the bark 

 and exterior portions of the tree. 



It is rather injurious during the spring and fall at which 

 times it visits the orchards and gardens, and seemingly spends 

 much of the time industriously making small round holes which 

 are about one fifth of an inch or less in diameter and which 

 penetrate the outer bark into the sap wood. These holes are 

 placed in rows around the tree, rather closely together, and 

 one row above another so that there are sometimes hundreds 

 or thousands of these small holes in one tree. Apple and pear 

 trees and the mountain ash are the chief garden trees so treated, 

 but they also treat likewise maple, poplar, oak, pine and birch 

 among the forest trees. This treatment is a decided injury to 

 the trees, and no benefit as the holes are not bored to secure 

 insects, being placed in sound bark where there are no insects. 



To my great regret I am obliged to place this species in the 

 list of injurious birds, as while doing some good the ravages 

 committed in the orchard more than overbalance the possible 

 good they may do elsewhere. Our other Woodpeckers are all 

 highly beneficial. Specimens of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 

 which were killed while puncturing orchard trees had nothing 

 in their digestive apparatus but the soft sapwood which was 

 evidently the very thing they were seeking. 



Genus CEOPHLCEUS Cabanis. 



405a. CeopJilcetis pileatus abietkola Bangs. Northern Pil- 

 eated Woodpecker; Log Cock; Wood Hen; Woodcock; 

 Black Woodcock; Laughing Woodpecker; Stump Breaker. 



