35° 



AVES 



and the sparrows. They include the kingfishers and the horn-bills. 



The horn-bills are large birds using their enormous bills in wall- 

 ing up nests. The male seals up the female in a hollow tree, feeding 

 her through a small aperture. The kingfisher family includes three 

 species in the United States. It nests in a hole dug horizontally 

 into a bank of earth. Its food consists almost entirely of small 

 fishes. The belted kingfisher is an enemy of trout and other fry 

 at fish hatcheries. 



Order 15. Pici. — The woodpeckers and sapsuckers are the most 

 familiar of our native birds. There are about twenty-five species 

 of American woodpeckers. The flicker, or golden-winged wood- 

 pecker, is a large bird which perches crosswise on limbs like the 

 true perchers. It is also called the " yellow hammer " or "high- 

 hole." Its stomach contents show over fifty per cent insect food, 

 about forty per cent vegetable food, chiefly berries and seeds. The 

 red-headed woodpecker, immortalized in Longfellow's " Hiawatha," 

 is a showy creature with a brilliant crimson head and neck, white 

 breast and black back and tail. Its food consists of ants, beetles, 

 weed-seeds and fruits. It is particularly fond of beech-nuts. The 

 downy woodpecker and the hairy woodpecker consume about seventy- 

 five per cent insect food and about twenty-five per cent vegetable 

 food, mostly weed-seeds and wild fruits. The yellow-bellied sap- 

 sucker injures trees by girdling them. It drinks the sap exuding 

 from its neatly formed squarish holes. In New England some 

 orchard owners protect their trees with fine wire netting. This 

 form is the most migratory of our woodpeckers. Toucans have 

 enormous bills which, however, are extremely thin and light in 

 weight. 



Order 16. Machrochires. — The Machrochires Include the whip- 

 poor-will, night hawk and chimney swift which are exceedingly 

 valuable as enemies of both day and night flying insects. (Figures 

 194 and 195.) 



The humming-birds feed on insects and spiders and on the sap 

 of trees in holes prepared by the sapsucker, as well as upon the 

 nectar of flowers. Humming birds, although small, are exceedingly 

 brave and pugnacious, and one pair of them will attack and drive 

 to flight hawks and large snakes. The swifts are less attractive 

 than humming birds and are often mistaken for swallows. They 

 have a broad bill and wide mouth like the goat-suckers. 



