Note: A rapid drumming with the bill on the tree branch or trunk serves for a love-song, and it has a screaming call note.
Season: In migrations; more abundant in fall than in spring.
Breeds: North from Massachusetts.
Nest: In an unlined hole, which is often 18 or 20 inches deep.
Eggs: 5, pure white.
The Sapsucker is a superbly marked Woodpecker, but its beauty is neutralized by its pernicious habit of boring holes in the tree bark through which it siphons the sap or eats the soft, inner bark.
In some localities they will destroy large tracts of fruit trees by stripping off the entire outer bark. Here, in the garden, they attacked a large spruce one autumn, and the next spring the trunk was white with the sap that leaked from the hundreds of "taps," and the tree has never since recovered its vitality.
Where these birds are plentiful, many orchard owners cover the tree trunks with fine wire netting, and it would almost seem that the destruction of this species is justi-fiable, but care should be taken not to confuse the other innocent Woodpeckers with this red-crowned, red-throated evil-doer. Only having seen the bird in its migrations, I have never heard the wonderfully rapid drumming to which Mr. Bicknell refers, and which he says does not oeur until the birds mate and is never heard in the autumn. This tattoo, beat upon a tree with the beak, is, in fact, the love note of the majority of Woodpeckers.
Red-headed Woodpecker: Melanerpes erthrocephalus.
Tricolour.
Plate 48.
Length: 8.50-9.50 inches.
Male and Female: Head, throat, and neck crimson. Back, wings, and tail blue-black. White below. White band on wings, and white rump. Bill horn-coloured, and about as long as head.
Note: A guttural rattle, similar to the cry of the tree-toad. In April a hoarse, hollow-sounding ery. (Bicknell.)
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