. New England bird life: being a manual of New England ornithology; . ly by pursuing themin the air and returning after such exploits to its perch,almost in the manner of a Kingbird or Pewee. Nuts,berries and other fruits vary its fare; and to procurethese it may often be seen creeping and hanging in thestrangest attitudes among the terminal twigs of trees,so slender that they bend with the weight of the traces of its carpenter work on trees are quite pe-culiar ; for it has a way of operating on sound healthywood when the sap is flowing, by which patches of barksome inches in diameter
. New England bird life: being a manual of New England ornithology; . ly by pursuing themin the air and returning after such exploits to its perch,almost in the manner of a Kingbird or Pewee. Nuts,berries and other fruits vary its fare; and to procurethese it may often be seen creeping and hanging in thestrangest attitudes among the terminal twigs of trees,so slender that they bend with the weight of the traces of its carpenter work on trees are quite pe-culiar ; for it has a way of operating on sound healthywood when the sap is flowing, by which patches of barksome inches in diameter are removed. The object ofthe bird is apparently to get at the soft succulent inner 78 PICID^ : WOODPECKERS. bark in which the circulation of the wood is most active,and we cannot suppose that trees girdled and bled insuch fashion are not injured by the operation. To someextent therefore the bird merits the name of Sap-sucker, and deserves the disfavor with which its ap-pearance in the orchard is usually regarded. Woodpeckers as a rule are stationary or nearly so,. Fig. 13.— Yellow-bellied Woodpecker. shifting their quarters rather according to fortuitous cir-cumstances than in obedience to the strict law of north-south migratory impulse. If any one of our speciescomes fully within the letter of the law, it is the Yellow-bellied, as indeed might be inferred from what has beensaid of the nature of its food. In southern New Eng-land, the bird is chiefly observed in spring and fall ;in other sections it is a common summer resident,breeding in large numbers. No one should be sur-prised to hear of the bird in mid-winter, though Ihave overlooked the records to this effect, if any, in-deed, exist. The mode of nesting is in no wise pecul- CENTURUS CAROLINUS : RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER. 79 iar, nor are the eggs to be recognized by any infalliblecharacters. They are four to six in number, and meas-ure about , but vary much in size as well as indegree of sphericity. RED-BELLIED W
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