DO OTHER WOODPECKERS TAP TRE1 91 
writer in Virginia about 10 per cent of the basswood barrel heads and 
of the oak staves bore defects sufficient to cause their rejection from 
the much more valuable furniture or tight cooperage grades. It has 
been shown, furthermore, that from 16 to 39 per cent of the wood of 
individual trees, of bald cypress at least, is spoiled by defects due to 
sapsucker work. However, if only 1 per cent of the lumber of trees 
attacked (10 per cent of the whole number) is discarded, the annual 
loss for the whole United States is more than a million and a quarter 
dollars. It seems certain that this estimate is not excessive, since it 
takes no account of lumber not rejected but reduced in grade, and 
since it has practically been demonstrated that the loss on one kind 
of timber alone, namely hickory, is fully half the sum mentioned. 
The meaning of these fknires will be better understood if one considers 
that they express the value of five-sevenths the total cut of black 
walnut in the United States, or very near the value of the total 
lumber, lath, and shingle production of single States, its Arizona, 
Colorado, or Xew Mexico, and considerably more than the value of 
the lumber produced by any one of nine other States in the Union. 1 
DO OTHER SPECIES OF WOODPECKERS SHARE THE SAP SUCKERS' 
HABITS? 
It has always been a mooted question to what extent, if any, other 
species of woodpeckers tap trees for the sap. Apparently the red- 
headed woodpecker is occasionally guilty of the act. but cases where 
it has been detected actually drilling the holes are so few that the 
habit must be considered exceptional. Mr. C. A. White writes as 
follows : 
Upon the Iowa University campus we have a number of grand old aboriginal oaks, 
a favorite resort for red-headed woodpeckers | Mdancrpcs frythrocephalus). Among 
the young and growing trees that have been transplanted upon the campus are some 
sugar maples (Acer saccharinunw the bodies of which are 6 to 8 inches in diameter. 
Seeing the woodpeckers busily tapping upon them. I examined the trunks and found 
them perfectly sound, but the birds had pierced many holes of the usual size through 
the bark and into the cambium layer, where they stopped. The sap was flowing 
freely from the holes, and. watching the movements of the birds afterwards upon the 
trees, I became convinced that they were sucking the sap and that they had pecked 
the holes for the purpose of obtaining it. 2 
A western relative of the red-headed woodpecker has been found 
doing similar work. Mr. F. Stephens makes the following statement 
in regard to the California woodpecker (Melaneipesf. bairdi): 
At one of my camps in the pine region of Smiths Mountain, a family of this species 
developed the sapsucking habit. I had noticed some fresh holes in the bark of two 
live oaks, a foot or two from the ground, from which sap was flowing, and later I saw 
the birds drinking — in one case three were seen drinking at the same time. This is 
the only instance of the habit in this species that has come under my observation. 3 
1 All estimates based on Forest Products Report Xo. 40. Bureau of Census. 1909. 
» American Xaturalist. VII. 4%. 1873. 
s F. Stephens, in Bendire's Life Histories of X. A. Birds, II, 115, 1*95. 
