1736 THE PICARIAN BIRDS 



sap and found it unmistakably sweet. The leaves on branches above the drills 

 drooped, but those below were in good condition. I watched the drills on this 

 tree from 12:30 p. M. until 2, and from 4 until 6 P. M., being concealed in the 

 bushes to the northwest of the tree. During nearly the whole of this period of 

 three and a half hours one or more woodpeckers were in the tree engaged at the 

 drills; they were a male, a female, and two young birds. Four visits were paid 

 by humming birds in the time named, but the visitors were driven away by the 

 woodpeckers. At 5:30 I shot one of the young birds in order to determine the 

 number of individuals using the ' orchard.' His absence was unnoticed by the sur- 

 vivors. The next day the male, female, and one young bird were present, the tree 

 being seldom left by all at one time. Ten visits were paid by humming birds; in 

 five cases they reached the drills, and, hovering, drank sap from one or more of 

 them. In the other cases, the woodpeckers being present, the. birds were driven 

 away. The work of the woodpeckers seemed to me, armed as I was with an ex- 

 cellent opera glass and sitting not more than thirty feet from the drills, to be per- 

 fectly plain in character. During the morning the female drilled four or five new 

 holes; they were above others in perpendicular series, and yielded sap freely. She 

 was closely attended by the young one, who occasionally swallowed pieces of the 

 soft bark, or cambium layer, taken from the bottom of the drills; the female also ate 

 some of it. When not drilling or resting, the female dipped sap from the holes near 

 by. The male drilled no holes, but dipped in those yielding sap. The dipping was 

 done regularly and rather quietly, often two or three times in each hole. The sap 

 glistened on the bill as it was withdrawn, and I could sometimes see the tongue move. 

 The bill was directed toward the lower, inner part of the drill, which, as I found 

 by examination, was cut so as to hold the sap. I looked carefully, again and 

 again, to try and find insects in the sap, but none were there, although numbers 

 crawled upon the bark. Occasionally, with a nervous motion of the head, the birds 

 caught an insect. There was no doubt as to when they did this, either on the 

 bark or in the air, for in swallowing an insect they always occupied an appreciable 

 time in the process." 



Mr. Bolles states that the birds consume the sap in large quantities for its 

 own sake, and not for the insect matter which such sap may chance occasionally 

 to contain; that the sap attracts many insects of various species, a few of which 

 form a considerable part of the food of this bird, but whose capture does not 

 occupy its time to anything like the extent which sap drinking occupies it; that 

 different families of these woodpeckers occupy different " orchards," such families 

 consisting of a male, female, and from one to four or five young birds; that the 

 "orchards" consist of several trees usually only a few rods apart; that the for- 

 est trees attacked by them generally die, possibly in the second or third year of 

 ase; and that the total damage done by them is too insignificant to justify their 

 persecution in well-wooded regions. 



The genus Dendrocopus is not only widely distributed over the 

 globe, but to it belong the best-known English species, such 

 as the greater and lesser spotted woodpeckers. There are al- 

 together forty-six species spread over the greater part of Europe and Asia as 



