184 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



And for all that, Franconia woodpeckers 

 are not so conservative as not to be able 

 to take up with substantial improvements. 

 They know a good thing when they see it. 

 These same sapsuckers, or one of them, was 

 not slow to discover that one of our crew, 

 an entomological collector, had set up here 

 and there pieces of board besmeared with a 

 mixture of rum and sugar. And having 

 made the discovery, he was not backward 

 about improving it. He went the round of 

 the boards with as much regularity as the 

 moth collector himself, and with even greater 

 frequency. And no wonder. Here was a 

 feast indeed; victuals and drink together; 

 insects preserved in rum. Happy bird ! As 

 the most famous of sentimental travelers 

 said on a very different occasion, " How I 

 envied him his feelings ! " For there seems 

 to be no doubt that sapsuckers love a liquid 

 sweetness, and take means of their own to 

 secure it. 



On our present trip my walking mate and 

 I stopped to examine a hemlock trunk, the 

 bark of which a woodpecker of some kind, 

 almost certainly a sapsucker, had riddled 



