5 6 ° 
PICARIAN BIRDS. 
clipped in those yielding sap. The dipping was done regularly and rather quietly, 
often two or three times in each hole. The sap glistened on the bill as it was 
withdrawn, and I could sometimes see the tongue move. The bill was directed 
towards the lower, inner part of the drill, which, as I found by examination, was 
cut so as to hold the sap. I looked carefully, again and again, to try and find 
insects in the sap, but none were there, although numbers crawled upon the bark. 
Occasionally, with a nervous motion of the head, the birds caught an insect. There 
was no doubt as to when they did this, either on the bark or in the air, for in 
swallowing an insect they always occupied an appreciable time in the process.” 
Mr. Bolles states that the birds consume the sap in large quantities for its own 
sake, and not for insect matter which such sap may chance occasionally to contain; 
that the sap attracts many insects of various species, a few of which form a 
considerable part of the food of this bird, but whose capture does not occupy its 
time to anything like the extent which sap-drinking occupies it; that different 
families of these woodpeckers occupy different “ orchards,” such families consisting 
of a male, female, and from one to four or five young birds; that the “ orchards ” 
consist of several trees usually only a few rods apart; that the forest-trees attacked 
by them generally die, possibly in the second or third year of use; and that the 
total damage done by them is too insignificant to justify their persecution in 
well-wooded regions. 
Pied The genus Dendrocopus is not only widely distributed over the 
Woodpeckers, globe, but to it belong the best known English species, such as the 
greater and lesser spotted woodpeckers. There are altogether forty-six species 
spread over the greater part of Europe and Asia, as well as North America; but 
the genus is absent from Africa below the Sahara, although represented in Algeria 
and Morocco, as in Palestine and Syria. A resident species in most parts of the 
British Islands, a considerable number of immigrants arriving in the autumn, 
during which season a large number regularly pass over Heligoland, the greater 
spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopus major), with its conspicuous pied plumage, is a 
handsome and striking bird. A notable difference exists, however, between the 
coloration of the two sexes, the males having a red patch at the back of the head, 
totally wanting in the females, in which the entire head and nape of the neck is 
black. The young birds, on the other hand, have the crown red, thus possessing 
a more striking coloration than either of the parents, a feature not often 
to be seen in birds. So shy is the great spotted woodpecker, that but few people 
are acquainted with it in a state of nature, and even where the bird is known to 
occur, it is by no means easy to get a sight of it. Its single note, resembling the 
knocking of two stones together—a sort of chit —can be often heard, but the 
bird is not visible, having probably placed the trunk of a big tree between itself 
and the observer, after the manner of woodpeckers in general. In the spring 
it makes a peculiar drumming noise on the smaller branches of the trees or on 
the trunks of dead trees, and this noise, which appears to be a sort of signal-code 
between one bird and its mate, can be heard for a considerable distance. The 
species is found in wooded districts, but generally in park-lands, where hollow 
trees occur here and there; and in these the great spotted woodpecker bores for its 
nesting-place. The bird seems to pursue a kind of regular round of trees in search 
