The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-09-07
WOODPECKERS HELPED HI
 OUT.

| OO4.
 Man Who Has Studied Them for Many Years Declares They Make Bird's-eye
 Maple.
 When a man has spent eighty years and more than seVenty-tive thousand
 dollars in studying the ways of wild | things" said Greenleaf Davis, it would seem as if he should know some thing about the nature of animals and birds. but am obllge to own that am more ignorant to-day than was when
 my father came here from Massachu- sctts in 1924, when I was nine years old. He left all his property to me, includ- l ing miles of timber lands and money in the bank, and have spent all of it eX- cept this spot where my camp stands. | What have I accomplished That depends very much upon how you look at it. The way the world sees things my life has been wasted. Instead of
 being rich, I am very poor-so poor that the town keeps me in the aims house free of cost through the cold weather I have almost assured my self of very many facts, though I am not absolutely certain concerning any except two.
 "The first is that every woodpecker that digs hole in a tree for nest | chooses the east side. I have spent more than half a century studying
 woodpeckers. Within half a mile of my camp are six hundred and twelve l wOodpeCker nests. 1 have the largest collection of woodpeckers in the world, though none of them are tame or more than half dOmesticated. l have spent as much as two hundred and fifty dol- i lars in year buying meat to feed the ! woodpeckers. Nobody living or dead 1 has studied the woodpeckers so much as have, but the sum of my knowl- edge is very small
 T know that these birds insist on having the holes that enter their nests face the east. because I have waited until the eggs were laid in the holes in posts had put out and then turned the posts about. have done this when the birds were away, and never has any bird continued to incubate her young when the hole was changed from due east. think the wood peckers choose an eastern aspect for the reason that they can know when the sun is up. They are all early risers, and having no alarm clocks they make sun dials of their nests.
 My second disiovery is of some com dercial use. For hundreds of years lumbermen and cabinet makers have been studying to learn what causes ma pie wood to assume the mottled and spotted form known as 'bird's-eye.' In one hundred rock maple trees, perhaps, one Is 'bird's-eye.' Nobody can pick the specific tree out by inspecting the bark or the manner of growth. You may have to chop two hundred trees before you find one, but it is worth the sacrifice.
 Fact is, the woodpeckers make all the bird's-ey maple there Is in the world. In flying about the woods they come to a rock maple tree that yields very sweet sap in the selsO\ when sap is running. Most birds like sweets. W0odpeckers are very fond of sugar. Having found tree yielding large percentage of sugar. the birds peck holes in the trunk and then stand against the bark and drink the sap as 1t ooZes out.
 After the sap has ceased to flow and the trees have leaved out new wood, bark forms in those small holes The pecking and sap gathering go on for years until the tree, having given up so much sap to the birds, begins to fur nish fluid containing less sugar. In ten or twelve years after the birds quit a tree the holes are all grown up, and mo- body can pick out the big bird's-eyes from other trees that the woodpeckers did not visit.
 More than fifty years ago started in to induce the woodpeckers to help me make bird's-eye naples. This spring I had more than one thousand birds in my employ for two months. On the side hill overlooking my camp are about three hundred bird's-ey ma- p1es of my own fake. I know every one of them, though nobody else can guess at the valuable trees. If I live a few years longer I am going to begin cut ting, after which I shall have more money than I can spend. If I die, I have left a record of every tree, so that the Audubon society can market the wood and devote the money to giving protection to WOodpeckers. "-Patten (Me) Correspondence of the Washing ton Post.