AVES 



595 



the red-headed woodpecker, Melanerpes erythrocephalus, the hairy, 

 and the downy woodpecker, Dryohates puhescens, are the most com- 

 mon species. These birds are quite destructive to some orchard trees, 

 telephone poles, and occasionally roofs of buildings. 



Passeriformes (Song or Sparrowlike Birds). — More than half of 

 the known birds belong to this order. They all have four toes, three 

 in front and one behind on the same level as the other three. There 

 are about sixty families described. They are usually small and most 

 of them have characteristic songs. The arrangement of the toes is an 





Pig. 316. — Starling. Sturnus vulgai-is. An introduced European bird. (From Met- 

 calf, Textbook of Economic Zoology, published by Lea and Febiger, after Snyder.) 



adaptation for grasping and perching. There are nineteen families 

 of common birds which make up this large group, including such birds 

 as sparrows of several kinds, cardinals, buntings, tanagers, swallows, 

 kingbirds, larks, phoebes, scissor-tailed flycatchers, crows, jays, star- 

 lings, magpies, blackbirds, grackles, cowbirds, bobolinks, swallows, 

 martins, waxwings, shrikes, vireos, warblers, wrens, thrashers, mock- 

 ingbirds, nuthatches, chickadees, robins, and bluebirds. The starling, 

 Sturnus vulgaris, was introduced from Europe in about 1850. Since 

 that time it has spread westward from the Atlantic seaboard until 



