262 FROM BLOMIDON TO SMOKY. 



through the forest tapping one tree here and 

 another there, but they select one, two, perhaps 

 three groups of trees well lighted and warmed by 

 the sun, and make sap orchards of them, cling- 

 ing to them many hours at a time, week after 

 week, and returning to them, or others close at 

 hand, year after year. 



Within a mile of my cottage at the foot of 

 Chocorua there are half a dozen of these drink- 

 ing places of the yellow-breasted woodpeckers, 

 and each one of them is a focus for ruby-throats. 

 The one which I have known longest I discov- 

 ered in 1887. It consists of a group of gray 

 birches, springing from a single stump and ex- 

 panding into fifteen distinct trunks. When I 

 first saw it all the trees were living, and nearly 

 all of them were yielding sap from the girdles 

 of small drills which the woodpeckers had made 

 in the trunks, about nine feet from the ground. 

 In July, 1893, all but three of the trees were 

 dead, and of the dead trunks all except two had 

 been broken off by the wind at a point a few 

 inches below the drills. The surviving trees had 

 been tapped, and were in use by both sapsuckers 

 and humming-birds. During 1890, 1891, and 

 1892, the humming - bird in attendance at this 

 orchard was a male of noticeably strong charac- 

 ter. There was no mistaking him for any chance 

 visitor at the place. He spent all his time there, 



