A bacchant for sweets is the Sapsucker free! “The spring is here, and I’m thirsty!” quoth he: “There’s good drink, and plenty stored up in this cave; ’Tis ready to broach!” quoth the Sapsucker brave. 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.” “How’d you know they had white eggs?” asked Clary. “You can’t see into a Woodpecker’s hole.” “No; I could reach in, though. I didn’t keep the egg, and only looked at it, and one of the old birds bit me something fierce. They’re real plucky birds, anyway, whatever they are called, for nobody seems to give them the same name. Mother says they are Pigeon Woodpeckers, and Dad calls them Yallerhammers, and both names fit pretty well.” “There are half a dozen Woodpeckers to be found here, but the one that Eliza has described and the little black-and-white streaked Downy Woodpecker are the most familiar as well as the most useful of them all. As to Eliza’s Pigeon Woodpecker or Yellowhammer, the poor bird is weighed down by over thirty popular names,—Northern Flicker, Golden-winged Woodpecker, Wake-up, Gaffer, and Partridge Woodpecker being among them, though the Wise Men who settle these things for us have decided to call him merely ‘the Flicker.’ “In spite of the fact that, owing to his size and plumpness, the Flicker has been until recently allowed to be shot as a game-bird, he is our commonest Woodpecker, and spring would not be the same in this woodland region if we did not hear the roll of the drum, as he beats on a branch, that announces the coming of the feathered procession of migrants.