St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1901-01-02
Secret of Birdseye Maple.

| After having spent more than sixty
years and more than $40 900 in hunting
bears and studying the ways OF wild
creatures, Greenleaf Davis of Patten,
Me-, has begun to raise tame wood'peck-
RS with the purpose of using them to
convert ordinary re OK NAPLES INTO the
rare and costly wood known as blrdseye
maple. Mr.. Davis is more than ~.
Sixty years ago be inherited mill prop
erty valued at $4,000, which be soon
sold and then he went to the woods
under the side of Mount KathadiD. Here
he built log camp and spent much OF
his time on the trail of bears and Indian
devils, of which he has killed more than
any other man in Maine. 1t has been
Mr.. Davis belief that no creature should
be kept in captivity more than month.
| If the creatures he caught chose to re-
main with him after that period they
were welcome to such fare as he could
afford to give. If they wanted to 60,
the doors were open. In this way he
has tanned squirrels, muskrats and
woodchucks until they and their OIL
spring nearly overran his camp. with
birds he has been less successful. because
most OF them went away south at the
annual migrations, and when they came
| back, if any did come back, they were
ungratetul enough to prefer their liberty
to anything that Mr.. Davis could offer.
He has two crows, one of which is more
than 30 years old, which have stayed by
him and never sought the society OF their
kind. Two robins lived with him tor
three years, but persisted one cold night
when the camp fire went out. His great
success has been won with Woodpeckers,
of which he now has nearly one hundred.
They are of the hairy and the downy
species in about equal numbers, but more
than both OF these in number and esteem
are the red-headed sapsuckers, which
pick round holes in the bark of trees,
making them look like the bottom of an
old styled colander
AS these woodpeckers did not migrate,
Mr.. Davis had company the year round.
He put up boxes for them to occupy as
homes and in a few years the maple
grove back OF his camp was filled with
| birds. The yellow hammer is the only
species of the woodpecker family that
will live without inst ct food, and after
the sapsuckers grew very numerous.
Mr.. Davis had much trouble to feed
them. He dug up the ant hills and sifted
the sand out to get the insects for his
birds, but in spite of his labors, the red
headed woodpeckers made sad havoc in
his sap orchard, digging holes in his best
map'es and impairing the flow OF sap,
from which much OF his living d rived.
1t was impossible to kill the birds be
cause OF the company they afforded, and
and it was equally impossible to live
without the income from the sap or
chald. The old man spent weeks in his
grove, watching the results OF the
" ounds which the birds inflicted on the
bark. As the scars healed he noticed
that there was bright red spot lett on
the wood directly below the wound. II
the tree was badly marked the red spots
were more numerous than they were on
trees which had suffered less, while on
trees which the woodpeckers had not
visited there were no traces OF red.
About this time it occurred to him
that as the beautiful markings OF birds
eve maple were due to the red spots in
the wood and as nobody had ever been
able to account for them, it was posi-
Die that the variety OF maple known as
brdseye might owe its origin to the
work of the woodpeckers. Il so, he had
made discovery that had baffled botan-
lists Tor years. He had also learned how
to make his colony of tame woodpeckers
selt-supporting. By mixing the ants,
which he sits from the sand, with a
paste formed from elm bark boiled down
to thick batter, he can smear the
trunks OF thrifty NAPLES with such food
as the woodpecktrs require, and while
hey are getting a meal from the bark
their bills are boring new holes in the
trees that shall transform ordinary
maple wood, worth no more than $12 a
thousand feet, into birdseye maple that
sells anywhere tor $50 and $50 thous.
and, and the dealers cannot get all they
want at those prices New York Sun.