Yellow-bellied Sapsucker 195 
Murder is committed on his immensely useful 
relatives, who have the misfortune to look 
ever so little like him, simply because ignorant 
people’s minds are firmly fixed in the belief that 
every woodpecker is a sapsucker, therefore a 
tree-killer, which only this miscreant is, and 
very rarely. The rest of the family who drill 
holes in a tree harmlessly, even beneficially, do 
so because they are probing for insects. The 
sapsucker alone drills rings or belts of holes for 
the sake of getting at the soft inner bark and 
drinking the sap that trickles from it. 
Mrs. Eckstorm, who has made a careful study 
of the woodpeckers in a charming little book 
that every child should read, tells of a certain 
sapsucker that came silently and early in the 
autumn mornings to feed on a favourite moun- 
tain ash tree near her dining-room window. In 
time this rascal killed the tree. “ Early in the 
day he showed considerable activity,” writes 
Mrs. Eckstorm, “flitting from limb to limb and 
sinking a few holes, three or four in a row, usual- 
ly above the previous upper girdle of the limbs 
he selected to work upon. After he had tapped 
several limbs, he would sit patiently waiting 
for the sap to flow, lapping it up quickly when 
the drop was large enough. At first he would 
be nervous, taking alarm, at noises and wheeling 
away on his broad wings till his fright was 
over, when he would steal quietly back to his 
