588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



others. Here, with something of the poet, the artist, of the seri- 

 ous man of business, too, yet being in truth none of these, he sets 

 about creating his own world a world which, like those we all 

 create in our several fashions, bears on every feature the stamp of 

 the creative mind. 



THE HUMMING BIRDS OF CHOCORUA. 



Br FRANK BOLLES. 



WHILE snow still sparkles in the frost furrows on Chocorua's 

 peak, the first rubythroats appear in the warm meadows 

 and forest glades at the south of the mountain. They love the 

 flowers as others of their race love them, and when apple blossoms 

 bless the air with perfume and visions of lovely color and form, 

 the humming birds revel in the orchards of the North as their 

 brothers delight in the rich flowers of the tropics. It is not, how- 

 ever, among flowers that the Chocorua rubythroats are happiest 

 or most frequently seen. Were some one to ask me to find a 

 humming bird quickly, it would make no difference what the age 

 of the summer or what the hour of the day, I should turn my 

 steps toward the forest, feeling certain that at the drinking 

 fountains of the yellow-breasted woodpecker, the red- capped 

 tapster, and loud-voiced toper of the birch wood, I should find 

 the rubythroats sipping their favorite drink. 



About the middle of April, and again nearly six months later, 

 a mischievous and wary woodpecker migrates north and south 

 across New England. The casual observer might take him to be 

 a demure little downy, intent upon keeping the orchard free from 

 insects, and if the sly migrant was ordinarily quick in placing a 

 tree trunk between his black-and-white body and the observer 

 his identity would not be detected. On April 17, 1892, 1 noticed 

 one of these birds clinging to a smooth spot on the trunk of a 

 shagbark which grew on a warm pasture hillside in sight of 

 Bunker Hill and the golden dome of the Massachusetts State 

 House. Watching him carefully for a moment, I saw that he 

 was a yellow-breasted or sap-sucking woodpecker, perhaps one of 

 my own Chocorua neighbors, and that he was quietly sipping the 

 sweet sap of the shagbark which was flowing from several small 

 holes in the bark, drilled, no doubt, that very morning by the 

 traveler so serenely occupied. The sapsuckers reach northern 

 New Hampshire before the snow has wholly melted in the woods. 

 I have seen them at Chocorua, on May 1st, at work upon trees 

 which they had evidently been tapping for fully a week. From this 

 time until the last of September, perhaps even till the 7th or 8th 

 of October, they spend the greater part of their time drilling small 



