350 THE YELLOW-BELLIED SAPSUCKER. 
of head and breast entirely wanting, or the pattern faintly indicated by changes in 
the mottled brownish gray of these parts. Length 8.00-8.75 (203.2-222.3) ; av. of 
nine Columbus specimens: wing 4.94 (125.5); tail 3.30 (83.8); bill .87 (22.1). 
Recognition Marks.—Chewink size; black breast-patch; red or enclosed 
white of throat; sulphur-yellow tinge of under parts distinctive. 
Nesting.—Not positively known to breed in Ohio. Nest, in a hole excavated 
in tree about forty feet up. Eggs, 5-7, pure white, not conspicuously polished. 
A MSIZEy Oy Xo O7n (22q0eRe life) 
General Range.—Eastern North America north to about latitude 63° 
30’ (north of Fort Simpson), breeding from Massachusetts northward ; south in 
winter to the West Indies, Mexico and Costa Rica. 
Range in Ohio.—Common, sometimes abundant during migrations. 
BEFORE the maple sap has ceased running, our woods are invaded from 
the south by a small army of hungry Sapsuckers. The birds are rather 
unsuspicious, quiet, and sluggish in their movements. Their common note 
is a drawling and petulant kee-a, like that of a distant Hawk; but they use 
it rather to vent their feelings than to call their fellows, for altho there may 
be twenty in a given grove, they are only chance associates and have no deal- 
ings one with another. Starting near the bottom of a tree, one goes hitching 
his way up the trunk, turns a lazy back-somersault to reinspect some neglected 
crevice, or leaps out into the air to capture a passing insect. The bulk of this 
bird’s food, however, at least during the migration, is secured at the expense 
of the tree itself. The rough exterior bark-layer, or cortex of, say, a maple, 
is stripped off, and then the bird drills a transverse series of oval or roughly 
rectangular holes through which the sap is soon flowing. The inner bark 
it eaten as removed and the sap is eagerly drunk. It is said also that in some 
cases the bird relies upon this sugar-bush to attract insects which it likes, 
and thus makes its 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. 
Pine trees also afford a favorite sustenance for this greedy Sapsucker. 
A certain group of exotic pines, on the State University campus, has suffered 
from the attacks of this species, possibly of the same individual, for several 
successive years. Each season the bird, keeping pace with the growth of the 
tree, attacks a higher section, and reopens the wounds of the previous*year. Of 
course this sort of thing is not be encouraged in orchards or ornamental trees, 
but the amount of damage done the country over is not serious, and the bird 
is also a large consumer of insects. 
It is difficult to believe that this handsome little Woodpecker, which 
appears so abundantly the second week in April, and even lingers into May. 
