A bacchant for sweets! “ ’Tis nectar I seek!”
And he raps on the tree with his sharp-whetted beak;
And he drinks, in the wild March wind and the sun,
The coveted drops, as they start and run.
He girdles the maple round and round—
’Tis heart-blood he drinks at each sweet wound;
And his bacchanal song is the tap-tap-tap,
That brings from the bark the clear-flowing sap.
—Edith M. Thomas, in Bird-Lore.
“How many kinds of Woodpeckers are there around here?” asked Eliza Clausen. “I didn’t know there was but one, the great big one, thick like a Pigeon, all speckled black and brown on top, with a red spot on his head and a big white spot over his tail. We had two down at our farm this summer, and they lived in a hole in the old wild cherry, and they laid real nice white eggs, just as white as our Leghorns.”