As it came back timidly but promptly, he left his perch and
sought a nearer acquaintance with the prudent female. Whether or not a
match grew out of this little flirtation I cannot say.
Our smaller woodpeckers are sometimes accused of injuring the apple and
other fruit trees, but the depredator is probably the larger and rarer
yellow-bellied species. One autumn I caught one of these fellows in
the act of sinking long rows of his little wells in the limb of an
apple-tree. There were series of rings of them, one above another,
quite around the stem, some of them the third of an inch across.
They are evidently made to get at the tender, juicy bark, or cambium
layer, next to the hard wood of the tree. The health and vitality of
the branch are so seriously impaired by them that it often dies.
In the following winter the same bird (probably) tapped a maple-tree in
front of my window in fifty-six places; and when the day was sunny,
and the sap oozed out, he spent most of his time there. He knew the
good sap-days, and was on hand promptly for his tipple; cold and cloudy
days he did not appear.
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