THE HUMMING-BIRDS OF CHOCORUA. 261 



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, I noticed one of these birds 

 clinging to a smooth spot on the trunk of a shag- 

 bark which grew on a warm pasture hillside in 

 sight of Bunker Hill and the golden dome of the 

 Massachusetts State House. Watching him care- 

 fully 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 Hamp- 

 shire 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 holes in the 

 bark of their favorite trees and in sipping from 

 the sap fountains thus opened the life blood of 

 the doomed trees. They do not range about 



