98 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



been Sapsuckers enough to make 10 per cent of these holes, 

 he would have met with one or more of the birds. 



He states that during the latter part of August, 1919, he 

 was camping near the ranches of Taos, New Mexico. On 

 the bark of several large and healthy white birches he found 

 at least 100 punctures forming lines at even heights one line 

 ' above the other. What first called his attention to the trees 

 was seeing a bird he believed to be Nelson's Downy Wood- 

 pecker alight on a tree just above what seemed to be the 

 freshest row of holes. The bird stayed on the spot about 

 twenty minutes, every little while picking up one of the ants 

 which was attracted to the flowing sap. For several hours the 

 bird could be seen, apparently catching ants on this tree, re- 

 maining on the tree from fifteen to twenty minutes at a time. 

 He asserts that in Denmark he has seen similar holes in the 

 bark, mostly in apple, maple and linden trees. 



Mrs. Wilhelmine Seliger of Hartford, Connecticut, writes: — 



The small holes in the apple trees I have seen made by the Downy 

 Woodpecker, who curiously turns his head from side to side and then 

 begins to pick again for the purpose of getting the juice out from under 

 the bark. 



Mr. C. J. Maynard of West Newton, Massachusetts, in a 

 letter dated October 24, 1920, says that he has actually seen 

 the Downy Woodpecker making rings of holes about a tree, 

 and that there was an old wild apple tree back of Prospect 

 Hill, Waltham, qji which he remembers seeing the Downy at 

 work. This, he avers, is the habit to which he refers in his 

 "Birds of Eastern North America," in which he says: — 



I do not think that this is in the least injurious to the trees, nor that 

 they are drilled by the birds with the intention of eating bark, but that 

 they are simply following the promptings of what we may call inherited 

 instinct.^ 



He asserts that these holes are drilled one-fourth inch or 

 little more in depth, that he never saw one that penetrated 

 the "fresh bark within," and believes that they serve as a sort 

 of storehouse for the birds, as insects enter them for con- 



i Maynard, C. J.: The Birds of Eastern North America, 1896, p. 377. 



