30 WOODPECKERS IN RELATION TO TREES. 



Bitter pecan (Hicoria aquatica) . — Southern Arkansas (A. A. and 

 A. M. 391) ; Cottonport and Longbridge, La. 



Bitter nut (Hicoria cordiformis) . — West Virginia (F. 73488); 

 Allenton, Mo. (A. A. and A. M. 393); Seven Locks, Montgomery 

 County, Md. ; Department of Agriculture grounds, District of 

 Columbia. 



Mocker nut (Hicoria alba). — This species is very commonly 

 attacked by sapsuckers. A tree in Fairfax County, Va., examined 

 March 21, 1909, bore many protruding girdles (PL X, fig. 1) where 

 the birds had pecked in the same place year after year, besides a great 

 deal of less conspicuous work. Plate IX, figure 2, shows similar gir- 

 dles on another tree which is fully 2 feet in diameter. At the date 

 specified there were many fresh drills in the girdles and elsewhere, 

 and sap was flowing freely. Evidently growth is vigorous in this 

 species, as a plug of wood grows out through almost every hole in the 

 bark. About all the sapsucker has to do when he visits the tree the 

 next year is to knock out the plugs. However, he usually punctures 

 a layer or two of sapwood to insure a good flow of sap. A dead tree 

 of this species near the same locality was evidently killed by sap- 

 suckers. It bore more than a hundred nearly or entirely complete 

 girdles of holes, besides numerous less perfect ones. In fact it was 

 riddled from bottom to top. (PI. IX, fig. 3.) From an examination 

 of sections of this tree it was learned that all this work has been done 

 in five years or less. Much of it never healed. The mocker nut 

 is severely attacked in the vicinity of Cloverdale, Ind. (letter from 

 J. B. Burris, Dec. 9, 1901), and to some extent also in Illinois (F. 

 26457). 



Big shellbark (Hicoria laciniosa). — Morgantown, W. Va. (H.); 

 Illinois (F. 26458) ; Department of Agriculture grounds, District of 

 Columbia. 



Shellbark (Hicoria ovata). — Widmann (see Bendire) notes that 

 this species is "occasionally punctured." A specimen from Butler 

 County, Mo., shows many pecks (F. 72449), and a tree in the Agri- 

 culture Department grounds at Washington has on the limbs 

 many sapsucker gir.dles, which cause the bark to split and peel off 

 more than it naturally would. 



Southern shellbark (Hicoria carolinsc-septentrionalis) . — Rome, 

 Ga. (A. M.). 



Pignut (Hicoria glabra). — Weed and Dearborn state that sap- 

 suckers "puncture the pignut hickory," and C. G. Bates says: 



Bird pecks are common almost everywhere that hickories are found, but perhaps 

 nowhere is the damage so serious as on the southerly slopes of the Cumberland Moun- 

 tains of Tennessee, where the hickory, mostly pignut, occurs in rather open stands 

 with chestnut oak, which is also frequently attacked by the sapsucker. (Dec. 15, 

 1908.) 



