Page:The Way of the Wild (1923).pdf/294

 sugar maple this bird will select a tree with a sunny south exposure and go up and down the south side, pecking little well-s in the bark with his sharp beak. These well-s are always deep enough to reach the white wood, and the sweet sap.

By the time he has made a score of well-s the first one will be full of sap.

So up and down the tree he goes all day long drinking the sweet sap until he can hold no more.

Some cabinet-makers claim that it is these sap well-s drilled in the sugar maple that make the beautiful wood called bird's eye maple.

But I am not sure as to that.

Most of the wild flowers, however, are not so hardy or so courageous as the skunk cabbage and the arbutus, and they prefer to await the call of Pan and the coming of the South Wind. Just as the North Wind announces the coming of winter, so the South Wind announces the coming of spring. Chinook he is called in the west, where he comes with great suddenness, causing the landscape to change in a single day.