124 



THE YOUNG OOLOGIST. 



not once dreaming that so small a bird 

 could cause it. "Sometimes called a Sap- 

 sucker." Falsely so-called. He has no 

 sucking apparatus. Boring for worms is 

 often asserted and stoutly defended. False 

 again; he never bores a wormy tree, and 

 besides he has no barbed tongue like his 

 tribe for pulling out a worm when he gets 

 almost to it. Still worse, he kills a tree 

 leaving no mark of his bill on the wood 

 equal to the scratch of a pin. Then what 

 under heaven does he do V 



Well, he kills the tree most certainly. 1 

 have seen the white birch cut off, or rather 

 broken off, twenty feet from the ground, 

 in more cases than I can number, all his 

 work. T have seen the yellow birch de- 

 stroyed in the same manner; branches of 

 the tree cut off, shriveled branches strug- 

 gling for life, but dying. I have seen a 

 tree girdled with spots twenty feet from 

 the ground, then again a few feet lower, 

 then below that, repeating the process to 

 the roots, leaving a dead and dry section 

 above each belt. I have seen the white 

 pine destroyed in the same way. I have 

 seen an elm tree eighteen inches in diame- 

 ter whose trunk of twelve feet was spotted 

 with "gimlet holes" in the bark nearly one 

 inch thick, and where for ten summers past 

 I have shot the pests, and thereby saved 

 the tree. Rut this was a "honey dew" 

 elm, of thicker, darker, greener foliage 

 than hundreds of others in the neighbor- 

 hood, and from the tips of the leaves a 

 drop of sweet liquid falls — hence the name. 



What other crimes against property this 

 bird may be guilty of, I leave others to 

 discover. What I have seen any one can 

 see if they have the same opportunity. 

 The bird crowds closely the snow line in 

 its northern migrations, and although leav- 

 ing his ' 'trade mark" on many trees, does 

 little damage in Massachusetts. But fur- 

 ther north, where the bird breeds, whole 

 orchards are severely injured, if not de- 

 stroyed, by them; scarcely a tree can be 

 found without the gimlet holes in the bark, 

 abandoned without enlargement for some 

 distaste in the sap. In that case the wound 

 in the soft inner bark would grow over, 



while the rough outside bark would show 

 the holes ever afterward. The first im- 

 pression might well be that sweet-apple 

 trees would be selected, but the rule is not 

 reliable, since the sour, "puckery" crab- 

 apple seldom escapes. 



The bird usually commences operations 

 early in May, on the smooth, green, healthy 

 bark of a tree just beginning to bear fruit, 

 and just as the bark swells out with the 

 soft pulp for the year's deposit of wood. 

 With true philosophy he invariably begins 

 just below the offshoot of branches, where 

 the upward flow of sap is retarded by 

 knotty fibers above, and where the accu- 

 mulation presses, causing the sap to flow 

 more freely than at any other place. If 

 the taste is satisfactory he bores again, then 

 returns to the first, lapping oui the sap 

 with a tongue fringed with hair on both 

 sides, meeting at the point. This is the 

 key to all his eccentric habits. Thus al- 

 ternately pecking new holes, and lapping- 

 out those already made, he soon girdles a 

 tree with bleeding wounds. Then perhaps ' 

 flies off to other trees, picking bugs and 

 worms from the bark, biit soon returns to 

 the flowing sap, where three-quarters of 

 the day is spent. If the heat of summer 

 dries a hole he at once enlarges it laterally, 

 causing it to bleed afresh. Thus by a pro- 

 cess constantly intermittent, the work is 

 carried on often by a whole family in turn. 



In this way the holes approach each 

 other till the flow of sap is so diminished 

 that the leaves fade and the fruit withers 

 on the stem or falls to the ground. Per- 

 haps not half the apple trees attacked are 

 killed outright, but the birch tree invaria- 

 bly dies. The injury is in degree, and in 

 every possible degree, from the round gim- 

 let hole, which is not fatal, to the broad 

 "countersink" which kills the branch or 

 the whole tree. I must allude here to the 

 fact that when the Woodpecker leaves the 

 tree a Humming-bird invariably drops 

 down from a twig on which he has been 

 waiting his turn, thrusts his tongue into 

 the holes in rapid succession and darts off 

 the moment Picus appears. 



I think the reader will acknowledge my 



