THE WOODPECKERS 



1735 



them. In the British Museum there may, however, be seen an illustration of the 

 way in which one of these woodpeckers stores up acorns supposed to be for its win- 

 ter supply of food. A piece of pine bark has been pierced with a number of holes, 

 drilled for the purpose of receiving the acorns. The species to which this habit has 

 been proved to belong is the white-fronted red-headed woodpecker (M. formiri- 

 vorus), inhabiting Central America, from Mexico to Panama. 



RED-HEADED AMERICAN WOODPECKER. 



Three species of this genus are known, all of them North American 

 and Central American in habitat, one of them (Sphyropicus varius) 

 also occurring in the West Indies. The genus does not possess the long extensile 

 tongue of the other woodpeckers, sharing the want of this essential characteristic 

 with another North- American genus (Xenopicus}. Writing of the habits of the 

 yellow-bellied sap sucker (S. varius), Mr. F. Bolles observes: "I found a sap 

 sucker's 'orchard' of about a dozen canoe birches and red maples, most of which 

 were dead, some decayed and fallen. The tree most recently tapped was a red 

 maple about forty feet high and two feet through at the butt. The drills made by 

 the woodpeckers began eighteen feet from the ground, and formed a girdle entirely 

 round the trunk. This girdle contained over eight hundred punctures, and was 

 almost three feet in height. In places the punctures or drills had run together, 

 causing the bark to gap and show dry wood within. The upper holes alone yielded 

 sap, and from this I inferred that what the birds obtained was the elaborated sap 

 descending from the leaves through the fibres of the inner bark. I tasted the 



