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regularly. These latter animals belonging to the tribe of gnawers add 

 a method to those noted before of gaining access to the meat of at least 

 the harder shelled nuts. By patient rasping with their chisel-like 

 teeth they gnaw a hole large enough to permit extraction of the meat. 

 Empty shells bearing such holes are familiar objects in woodlands 

 where nuts abound. 



Chestnuts, now largely extirpated from the Northeastern States, 

 were formerly eaten by several species of birds which are on the list 

 of acorn consumers also. The blue jay probably consumed more chest- 

 nuts tli.in did any other bird. Chinquapins and hazelnuts each are 

 known to be eaten by a few kinds of birds, while beech-nuts are fav- 

 ored by a much longer list. The crow, the blue jay, and the red-headed 

 woodpecker are the princij^al avian consumers of beeehnuts and in the 

 northern parts of its range the redhead's staying for the winter seems 

 to depend entirely on whether there is a good crop of these nuts. 



Beechnuts now and chestnuts in their day, like the other compara- 

 tively thin-shelled nuts were favorites with mice and squirrels also, 

 and the hard-shelled sorts such as walnuts and hickory nuts are con- 

 sumed only by these indefatigable gnawers. A few wild ducks swal- 

 low hickory nuts whole, the pileated, our largest woodpecker, breaks 

 them up, and the cardinal may occasionally bite into one of the thinner 

 shelled kinds. 



English walnuts, especially while still green, are attacked by crows 

 and purple grackles. This nut seems to be about the only one com- 

 mercially grown in the northeastern states, hence the depredations 

 upon it by the birds mentioned are the only ones by either birds or 

 mammals on nuts in this region that have unquestioned economic sig- 

 nificance. 



Public interest in nuts in the Northeast is chiefly in conservation 

 of a reasonable stock of wild nut trees, and in planting when necessary 

 to insure this result. From these points of view the relations of wild 

 birds and mammals to nuts are scarcely to be criticized. Trees live 

 so long and produce so many nuts that there is a vast surplus beyond 

 the number that can ever figure in replacements. This surplus may 

 much better be consumed by the birds and mammals than to go to 

 waste, especially since among these animals are species which play an 



