PERSONA NON GRATA 35 



quickly, showing that neither disease nor worms 

 caused it to fall ; it is clean and hard on the 

 back, showing that it came from a live tree, not 

 from a dead, rotting log. 



How do I know that a bird caused it to fall ? 

 The marks are precisely such as are always left 

 by a woodpecker's bill. How do I know that 

 it was a sapsucker's work ? Because no other 

 woodpecker has the habit which characterizes 

 the sapsucker, of sinking holes in straight lines. 

 The sapsuckers drill lines of holes sometimes 

 around and sometimes up and down the tree- 

 trunk, but almost always in rings or belts about 

 the trunk or branches. A girdle may be but a 

 single line of holes, or it may consist of four or 

 five, or more, lines. Sometimes a band will be 

 two feet wide ; and as many as eight hundred 

 holes have been counted on the trunk of a single 

 tree. Such extensive peckings, however, are to 

 be expected only on large forest trees. Most 

 fruit and ornamental trees are girdled a few 

 times about the trunk, and about the principal 

 branches just below the nodes, or forks. 



Why did the bird dig these holes ? There are 

 three things that he might have obtained, 

 sap, the inner bark, and boring larvae. Some 

 naturalists have suggested a fourth as possible, 

 the insects that would be attracted by the sap. 



