If we watch a bird for a time, we see that it is picking at the bark, dislodging bits of it in searching for concealed food. It hops forward, backward, and around the limbs, moving easily, taking rather long, rapid hops, seeming careless of a fall. When investigating crevices and peering under flakes of bark it cranes its neck, turning its head from side to side. The neck then appears constricted, like a pileated woodpecker in miniature. At other times it may drill holes--even the young birds of the year, which can have had little experience in this kind of work. They drill with a sideways stroke, to one side, then the other, then, perhaps, a stroke straight at the branch. In this manner, before very long, a small area is denuded of bark, the sideways strokes giving it an oval shape with the long axis parallel to the ground. However, at this season, mid-October, in the latitude of Boston, little sap rewards their efforts. _Winter._--Sapsuckers spend the winter mainly in the Southern States, Central America, and on the islands south of North America, but there are a few records indicating that a bird rarely may remain nearly or quite as far north as the southern limit of the breeding range. For example, Fred. H. Kennard (1895) reports finding one in Brookline, Mass., on February 6, 1895. Collected, “he proved to be in fine, fat condition”; and Harriet A. Nye (1918) watched, in Fairfield Center, Maine, a bird throughout the winter of 1911, in which the temperature fell to 32° below zero. Apples formed a considerable part of this bird’s diet, although he often hunted over the branches and trunks of trees. He was last seen April 5 “as sprightly as ever.” DISTRIBUTION _Range._--North and Central America and the West Indies, casual in Bermuda and Greenland.