132 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 



difference of opinion among ornithologists re- 

 garding the diet of these woodpeckers and their 

 motive for tapping sap-yielding trees. I had 

 heard it said that their sole reason for drawing 

 the sap was to attract insects which they then 

 fed upon. I had also heard that they ate the 

 tender cambium layer which intervenes between 

 the bark and wood of trees. I knew well that 

 the birds were insect-eaters, for I had often seen 

 them fly into the air with the grace of a tyrant 

 flycatcher or cedar-bird and capture insects on 

 the wing. 



On July 19, while watching a group of birds 

 gathered in the woods around my tame owl, 

 Puffy, two yellow-breasted woodpeckers and a 

 humming-bird attracted my attention. The wood- 

 peckers were scolding the owl, when the hum- 

 ming-bird darted towards one of them, hummed 

 before it, rushed at the other, and then seeing 

 the owl flew at him squeaking furiously. Then 

 it flew back to the first sapsucker and perched 

 near it. On the 21st, I returned to the spot and 

 found near by a sapsucker 's " orchard " of about 

 a dozen canoe birches and red maples, most of 

 which were dead, some decayed and fallen. The 

 tree most recently tapped was a red maple about 

 forty feet high and two feet through at the but. 

 The drills made by the woodpeckers began 

 eighteen feet from the ground and formed a gir- 



