SECOND WEEK] April 93 



come again the sapsuckers to the tree, remorselessly driving 

 hole after hole through the still untouched segments of its 

 circle of life. When the last sap-channel is pierced and 

 no more can pass to the roots, the tree stands helpless, 

 waiting for the end. Swiftly come frost and rain, and 

 when the April suns again quicken all the surrounding 

 vegetation into vigorous life, the victim of the sapsuckers 

 stands lifeless, its branches reaching hopelessly upward, 

 a naked mockery amid the warm green foliage around. 

 Insects and fungi and lightning now set to work unhin- 

 dered, and the tree falls at last, dust to dust ashes 

 to ashes. 



A sapsucker has been seen in early morning to sink 

 forty or fifty wells into the bark of a mountain ash tree, 

 and then to spend the rest of the day in sidling from 

 one to another, taking a sip here and a drink there, grad- 

 ually becoming more and more lethargic and drowsy, as 

 if the sap actually produced some narcotic or intoxicating 

 effect. Strong indeed is the contrast between such a 

 picture and the same bird in the early spring, then full 

 of life and vigour, drawing musical reverberations from 

 some resonant hollow limb. 



Like other idlers, the sapsucker in its deeds of gluttony 

 and harm brings, if anything, more injury to others than 

 to itself. The farmers well know its depredations and 

 detest it accordingly, but unfortunately they are not 

 ornithologists, and a peckerwood is a peckerwood to them; 

 and so while the poor downy, the red-head, and the hairy 

 woodpeckers are seen busily at work cutting the life threads 

 of the injurious borer larva?, the farmer, thinking of his 



