UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
frequently leave his drilling on one tree and go to 
another, drilling into a small red apple which had 
lodged among some twigs on a horizontal branch; he 
ate the pulp, and had made quite a large hole in 
the apple, when it became dislodged and fell to the 
ground. It is plain, therefore, that the sapsucker 
likes the juice of the apple, and of the tree that bears 
the apple. He is the only orchard bird who is a 
tippler. Among the forest trees, he sucks the sap of 
the sugar maples in spring, and I have seen evi- 
dence of his having drilled into small white pines, 
cutting out an oblong section from the bark, appar- 
ently to get at the soft cambium layer. 
It is a pleasant experience to sit in my orchard 
camp of a still morning and hear an apple drop here 
and there — “indolent ripe,” as Whitman says, in the 
fullness of time, or prematurely ripe from a worm 
at its heart. The worm finds its account in getting 
down to the ground where it can pupate, and in both 
cases the tree has finished a bit of its work and is 
getting ready for its winter sleep; and in both cases 
the squirrels and the woodchucks profit by the fall. 
But September woodchucks are few; most of them 
retire to their holes for the long winter sleep during 
this month; the harvest apples that fall in August 
hit them at the right moment; but the red squirrels 
are alert for the apple-seeds during both months, 
and they chip up many apples for these delicate 
morsels. They also love the hollow branches and 
4 
