PICUS PUBESCENS : DOWNY WOODPECKER. 73 



The holes do not injure the tree, and the active carpin- 

 tero is one of the best friends of the fruit-grower, by de- 

 stroying the insidious creatures which lurk beneath the 

 bark and work destruction of his hopes in the end, unless 

 their mischief is stayed by the friendly bird. Few of 

 our feathered friends, indeed, are more directly bene- 

 ficial to the husbandman than Woodpeckers, whose nat- 

 ural food is the eggs and larvse of insects that prey upon 

 the living objects of his concern ; and among them all 

 the Downy holds a leading place, through its great 

 abundance, its familiarity and its industry. Its work of 

 boring into the bark, par- 

 ticularly of the dryer, 

 older and more grub-in- 

 fested trees must not be 

 mistaken for the bark- 

 stripping operations of 

 the Sphyropicus, of which 

 more anon, though both 

 are too often confounded ^"^- "-downy woodpecker. 

 by the careless observer under whose ban they come to- 

 gether with the name of " sapsuckers." Open the mouth 

 of one of these borers whose work is beneficial, seize the 

 tongue, and you may draw that curious organ far out 

 beyond the end of the beak : it is a slender, cylindrical, 

 sinewy spear, of a delicate flesh-color, arrow-headed and 

 barbed. By a wonderful muscular mechanism the bird 

 poises the quivering weapon and launches it forth with 

 unerring aim to secure the hapless grub, which is then 

 as adroitly withdrawn all writhing into the captor's horny 

 beak. The tongue of a Yellow-bellied Woodpecker is 

 so constructed as to be scarcely extensible, and there- 

 fore fails of any such office as I have described. 



