236 



NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



vegetable matter to thirty-nine per cent, mineral matter to five 

 per cent. Among the former element, ants are the greatly pre- 

 dominating food, forming forty-three per cent of the whole. 

 These are eaten in immense numbers, often to the exclusion of 

 all other food, single stomachs containing over three-thousand 

 of^hem. Flickers may frequently be seen upon the ground 

 digging in the ant-hills for these insects. Next to ants comes 

 beetles (ten per cent), mostly the useful predaceous Carabids, 

 but also including May beetles and click-beetles. Grasshoppers 

 and "crickets, caterpillars, bugs. May flies, termites and spiders 

 together form but three per cent. The vegetable matter eaten 

 is quite varied. Corn and buckwheat are both sometimes taken, 

 but never extensively so, and when the Flicker is seen in the 



/2.?2 



YELLOW-SHAFTED FLICKER. 



F. E. L. Beal, Bull. No. 7, 1895. 

 cornfield he is in all likelyhood searching for grubs. The fruit 

 includes hackberries, blueberries, blackberries, June berries, 

 elderberries, mulberries, the berries of dogwood, Virginia 

 creeper and sourgum, wild grapes, choke cherries, wild black 

 cherries, and rarely, cultivated cherries in small amounts. The 



