THE SIMPLE AET OF SAPSUCKING 



THE yellow-bellied sapsucker is, at this time 

 of year, one of our most abundant wood- 

 peckers, and in its life we have an excellent 

 example of that individuality which is ever crop- 

 ping out in Nature — ^the trial and acceptance of 

 life under new conditions. 



In the spring we tap the sugar maples, and 

 gather great pailf uls of the sap as it rises from its 

 winter resting-place in the roots, and the sap- 

 sucker likes to steal from our pails or to tap the 

 trees for himself. But throughout part of the 

 year he is satisfied with an insect diet and chooses 

 the time when the sap begins to flow downward 

 in the autumn for committing his most serious 

 depredations upon the tree. It was formerly 

 thought that this bird, like its near relatives, the 

 downy and hairy woodpeckers, was forever bor- 

 ing for insects ; but when we examine the regular- 

 ity and symmetry of the arrangement of its holes, 

 we realise that they are for a very different pur- 

 pose than the exposing of an occasional grub. 



Besides drinking the sap from the holes, this 

 bird extracts a quantity of the tender inner bark 

 of the tree, and when a tree has been encircled 

 for several feet up and down its trunk by these 



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