The Red-naped Sapsucker 
during the migration, is secured at the expense of the tree itself. The 
rough exterior bark layer, or cortex of, say, a maple, is stripped off, and 
then the bird drills a transverse series of oval or roughly rectangular holes 
through which the sap is soon flowing. The inner bark, or cambium, is 
eaten as removed and the sap is eagerly drunk. It is said also that in 
some cases the bird relies upon this sugar-bush to attract insects which it 
likes, and thus makes its little wells do triple service.” 
In lieu of maple sap the western bird makes heavy requisition on 
the fresh-flowing pitch of pine and fir trees. As for cambium, that of the 
aspen (Populus tremuloides ) has marked preference, and the summer 
range of the bird, so far as it goes, is practically controlled by the occur¬ 
rence of the tree. Inasmuch as this tree is short-lived and of slight 
economic importance, the depredations of the bark-eaters are not seriously 
felt. 
The aspen, also, is the chosen nesting home of the Red-nape. On 
the bank of a northern river, the Pend d’Oreille, on the 28th of May, we 
found a nest some twenty-five feet up in an aspen tree sixteen inches in 
diameter. The tree was dead at the heart, but there was an outer shell 
of live wood two inches in thickness. The bird had penetrated this outer 
shell with a tunnel as round as an auger-hole, and an inch and a half in 
diameter, and had excavated in the soft heart-wood a chamber ten inches 
deep vertically, five and a half horizontally, and three from front to 
back. Here five eggs, as fresh as paint, reposed on the rotten chips. 
Like all, or most, woodpecker eggs these were beautifully transparent, 
with the position of the contained yolk clearly indicated. One egg was 
broken with a small round hole, as though a careless claw had been stuck 
into it. 
The parent birds, especially the male, who was caught on the eggs, 
as though inspecting the latest achievement, were very attentive, flying 
back and forth in neighboring trees, and giving utterance to the kee ah 
and other notes. 
In the Warner Mountains, where alone these birds summer within 
our borders, I heard a petulant clew clew , a double note, wherein the 
second member was an echo of the first. This reminded me of the 
chow chow of that amiable old pouter, the Red-bellied Woodpecker 
(Centurus carolinus) of the East, but would scarcely be conclusive as evi¬ 
dence of Centurine affinities. 
In this same region I found the Red-napes nesting at forbidding 
heights in the fir stubs, but always near to some grove of “quaking asps.” 
The young birds, which by the 8th of July were “hollering” loud enough 
to be heard from the ground, were evidently being fed on insects and 
IOIO 
