17 



shows that the apertures made for taking sap were quitedif- 

 ferent from those to which reference has been made in|the 

 foregoing pages. 



Section of two small red maple trees tapped for sap by Downy 

 Woodpecker. The bird while making the cuts was watched 

 by C. E. Bailey. It came back three times in two hours 

 to take sap from the lower holes a-a. The upper incisions 

 b-b were not used. 



In the investigation made during 1919 and 1920 by our of- 

 ficial observers, several people who actually saw the Yellow- 

 bellied Sapsucker in the act of making horizontal lines of holes 

 and feeding from them, described their observations. Mrs. 

 Viola E. Richards of South Deerfield writes on October 18, 

 1920, that she watched a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker make two 

 round holes in an apple tree. He drilled one shallow hole and 

 then began on another, which he frequently left to return to 

 the first, as if sap had gathered in one hole while he worked 

 at the other. There is a recrudescence of sap in maple trees 

 sometimes in autumn. The Indians are said to have drawn 

 sap in October. 



Mrs. William F. Eldredge of Rockport, Massachusetts, writes 



