166 



BIRDS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



quest of food visit the trees in orchards and yards, their visits to these 

 places are much less frequent than those of the little Downy. 



Both the Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers are called " Sap suckers' 

 by those who are unacquainted with birds, from the common belief that 

 both subsist largely on the sap of apple and other fruit trees. This 

 popular, yet mistaken idea, has induced many farmers and fruit-growers 

 to destroy these two species, as well as other woodpeckers, when found 

 about their orchards. 



Wilson refers to this bird as " a haunter of orchards and lover of apple 

 trees, an eager hunter of insects, their eggs and larvae in old stumps 

 and old rails, in rotten branches and crevices of the bark.'' " The food 

 of this species consists principally of the eggs and larvae of injurious 

 insects that are burrowing in the wood of our fruit and forest trees ; 

 these he is enabled to obtain by chiseling out a small hole with his 

 powerful bill, and drawing them from their lurking places with his long 

 barbed tongue. He also eats some small fruits and berries, but never, 

 so far as I am aware, the buds or blossoms of trees, as some persons 

 assert." E. A. Samuels. 



The food materials of nine of these woodpeckers examined by me are 

 mentioned below : 



Dryobates pubescens (Lnrar ). 



I>owny Woodpecker ; Sapsucker. 



DESCRIPTION ( Plate 7tf). 



Length about 63 inches ; extent about IV 2 ; outer tail feathers barred with black 

 and white, otherwise same in color as D. villosus. 



Habitat. Northern and eastern North America, from British Columbia and the 

 eastern edge of the plains northward and eastward. 



This indefatigable little insect hunter, the smallest of all our wood- 

 peckers, is a common resident in Pennsylvania. The timid disposition 

 so frequently noticed in the preceding species is rarely, if ever, shown 

 by the Downy Woodpeckers, which, at all seasons, are found frequent 

 ing our shade and fruit trees, and not unfrequently these little feathered 

 carpenters may be observed excavating nesting places in trees close to 

 the habitations of man. Downy Woodpeckers, subsist chiefly on various 

 forms of insects, and when this food becomes scarce they feed often- 

 times on the seeds of grasses and some few other plants; also, small 



