_Food._--The food of the red-breasted sapsucker is much like that of its close relatives in the _varius_ group. M. P. Skinner writes to me: “I have found red-breasted sapsuckers drilling on cottonwoods, willows, yellow pines, and lodgepole pines; but all the actual feeding I have seen was on willows. Mr. Michael tells me that these birds work largely on the apple trees that have been planted in various parts of the Yosemite Valley. When a sapsucker is at its wells, it takes a sip now and then, but considerable time is used in watchful guarding, or in driving away intruders or would-be robbers. In the case of such wells as I found on willow stems, I could see no established regularity in arrangement. They looked as if the bark had been irregularly scaled off. In fact, such work may be necessary to secure the inner bark; yet the birds actually took sap at such wells. One had a dozen willow stems on which it drilled and sipped in succession; each one was only a few inches from the next; and the bark of each, both above and below the wells, was worn smooth. This bird went from well to well in regular order, then back to the first well to begin again. Although sap formed the bulk of their food in August, I have seen them also searching the bark for insects during that same month.” McAtee (1911) lists the following trees that are attacked by the red-breasted sapsucker: Cottonwoods, willows, walnuts, birches, oaks, barberry, sycamore, mountain-ash, pears, apples, peaches, plums, apricot, orange, pepper, and blue gum (_Eucalyptus_). Emanuel Fritz (1937) has, on several occasions, found this sapsucker attacking redwood trees. “In each instance the individual tree was ‘peppered’ with holes in horizontal rows, from the base to the top. In virgin timber, it is only an occasional tree that is attacked, and one searches in vain for another victim in the general vicinity. * * * “During the present year, the writer came upon his first example of sapsucker work on so-called second-growth redwood. * * * The sapsuckers attacked every tree in two groups, or families, of sprouts.” W. L. Dawson (1923) writes: