e filled sipping
out the sap. This he did in a gentle, caressing manner that was very
suggestive. He made a row of wells near the foot of the tree, and other
rows higher up, and he would hop up and down the trunk as these became
filled. He would hop down the tree backward with the utmost ease,
throwing his tail outward and his head inward at each hop. When the
wells would freeze or his thirst become slaked, he would ruffle his
feathers, draw himself together, and sit and doze in the sun on the side
of the tree. He passed the night in a hole in an apple-tree not far off.
He was evidently a young bird not yet having the plumage of the mature
male or female, and yet he knew which tree to tap and where to tap it.
I saw where he had bored several maples in the vicinity, but no oaks
or chestnuts. I nailed up a fat bone near his sap-works: the downy
woodpecker came there several times a day to dine; the nut-hatch came,
and even the snow-bird took a taste occasionally; but this sap-sucker
never touched it; the sweet of the tree sufficed for him. This
woodpecker does not breed or abound in my vicinity; only stray specimens
are now and then to be met with in the colder months. As spring
approached, the one I refer to took his departure.

I must bring my account of my neighbor in the tree down to the latest
date; so after the lapse of a year I add the following notes. The last
day of February was bright and springlike. I heard the first sparrow
sing that morning and the first screaming of the circling hawks, and
about seven o'clock the first drumming of my little friend. His first
notes were uncertain and at long intervals, but by and by he warmed up
and beat a lively tattoo. As the season advanced he ceased to lodge in
his old quarters. I would rap and find nobody at home. Was he out on a
lark, I said, the spring fever working in his blood? After a time his
drumming grew less frequent, and finally, in the middle of April, ceased
entirely. Had some accident befallen him, or had he wandered away to
fresh fields, following some siren of his species? Probably the latter.
Another bird that I had under observation also left his winter-quarters
in the spring. This, then, appears to be the usual custom. The wrens and
the nut-hatches and chickadees succeed to these abandoned cavities, and
often have amusing disputes over them. The nut-hatches frequently pass
the night in them, and the wrens and chickadees nest in them. I have
further obse