HASTY OBSERVATION '^61 



the tree, but conducive to its health. Yet I 

 have seen the limbs of large apple-trees nearly 

 killed by being encompassed by numerous rings 

 of large, deep holes made by the yellow-bellied 

 woodpecker. This bird drills holes in the 

 sugar maple in the spring for the sap I have 

 known him to spend the greater part of a bright 

 March day on the sunny side of a maple, in- 

 dulging in a tipple of maple sap every four or 

 five minutes. As fast as his well holes filled 

 up he would sip them dry. 



A lady told me that a woodpecker drilled 

 holes in the boards that form the eaves of her 

 house, for the grubs of the carpenter bumblebee. 

 This also seemed to me a hasty conclusion, be- 

 cause the woodpeckers made holes so large that 

 the next season the bluebirds nested there. 

 The woodpeckers were probably drilling for a 

 place to nest. A large ice-house stands on the 

 river bank near me, and every season the man 

 in charge has to shoot or drive away the high- 

 holes that cut numerous openings through the 

 outer sheathing of hemlock boards into the 

 spaces filled with sawdust, where they find the 

 digging easy and a nesting-place safe and snug 



My neighbor caught a small hawk in his shad- 

 net, and therefore concluded the hawk ate fish. 

 He put him in a cage, and offered him frag- 

 ments of shad. The little hawk was probably 

 in pursuit of a bird which took refuge under 

 the net as it hung upon the drying-poles ; or he 

 may have swooped down upon the net m the 

 spirit of pure bluster and bravado, and thus 



