(_Sphyrapicus varius_) Woodpecker family
_Called also_: THE SAPSUCKER
_Length_--8 to 8.6 inches. About one-fifth smaller than the robin.
_Male_--Black, white, and yellowish white above, with
bright-red crown, chin, and throat. Breast black, in form of
crescent. A yellowish-white line, beginning at bill and
passing below eye, merges into the pale yellow of the bird
underneath. Wings spotted with white, and coverts chiefly
white. Tail black; white on middle of feathers.
_Female_--Paler, and with head and throat white.
_Range_--Eastern North America, from Labrador to Central America.
_Migrations_--April. October. Resident north of Massachusetts.
Most common in autumn.
It is sad to record that this exquisitely marked woodpecker, the most
jovial and boisterous of its family, is one of the very few bird
visitors whose intimacy should be discouraged. For its useful appetite
for slugs and insects which it can take on the wing with wonderful
dexterity, it need not be wholly condemned. But as we look upon a
favorite maple or fruit tree devitalized or perhaps wholly dead from
its ravages, we cannot forget that this bird, while a most abstemious
fruit-eater, has a pernicious and most intemperate thirst for sap.
Indeed, it spends much of its time in the orchard, drilling holes into
the freshest, most vigorous trees; then, when their sap begins to
flow, it siphons it into an insatiable throat, stopping in its orgie
only long enough to snap at the insects that have been attracted to
the wounded tree by the streams of its heart-blood now trickling down
its sides. Another favorite pastime is to strip the bark off a tree,
then peck at the soft wood underneath--almost as fatal a habit. It
drills holes in maples in early spring for sap only. If it drills
holes in fruit trees it is for the cambium layer, a soft, pulpy,
nutritious under-bark.
These woodpeckers have a variety of call-notes, but their rapid
drumming against the limbs and trunks of trees is the sound we always
associate with them and the sound that Mr. Bicknell says is the
love-note of the family.
Unhappily, these birds, that many would be glad to have decrease in
numbers, take extra precautions for the safety of their young by
making very deep excavations for their nests, often as deep as
eighteen or twenty inches.