. 
256 USEFUL BIRDS. 
the larve and pupe of this weevil. He does not, however, 
name the birds.? 
I have seen many shoots from which this insect had been 
removed by birds, and most of them showed the character- 
istic work of this Woodpecker. Some other Woodpeckers 
and the Chickadee are probably useful in this respect. The 
Downy Woodpecker hunts borers to the very twigs. Mr. 
Kirkland saw a mother bird pecking away at twigs infested 
by the oak pruner, taking out the larve and feeding them 
to her young. 
There is some reason for calling the Downy a sapsucker. 
Occasionally he is accused of tapping the smaller limbs and 
twigs of maples and other trees for their sap. Nuttall says 
he has seen the bird drinking sap from the trees, and that it. 
bores into the wax myrtle for that purpose. I have never 
been able to observe this, and ornithologists generally deny 
that it is a fact. But Mr. Bailey’s observations seem to 
prove that the farmer_is not altogether wrong in his appella- 
tion of the bird. The habit, however, seems to be not a 
common one. Mr. Bailey’s experience has been spoken of 
in a paper read before the American Ornithologists’ Union, 
and in another published in the annual report of the secretary 
of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture for 1900; 
but I am now able to present cuts from drawings of two 
stems tapped by the Downy, which show the ingenious 
method employed by the bird, also how its perforations 
differ from those made by the Sapsucker. The quotation 
from Mr. Bailey’s field notes follows : — 
At 12.30 I found a Downy Woodpecker, and watched him till 2.45; 
he took three larve from a maple stub, just under the bark. He next 
tapped two small swamp maples, four and six feet from the ground, 
and spent most of the time taking sap. He tapped the tree by pecking 
it a few times very lightly; it looked like a slight cut, slanting a little. 
The bird would sit and peck the sap out of the lower part of the cut. 
The cut was so small the sap did not collect very fast. The bird would 
go and sit for a long time in a large tree, then it would come back and 
take more sap. It did this three times while I was watching it. It did 
‘ Insects Injurious to Forest and Shade Trees, by A. S. Packard. Fifth 
Report of the United States Entomological Commission, quotation from Fitch, 
p. 740. 
