WESTERN BIRDS Woodpeckers 



by their undulating flight which makes them seem to 

 fairly bound through the air. 



Because of the growing interest in the preservation of 

 our National Forests and because, in many cases, pests 

 have threatened the entire destruction of the same, 

 scientists have been studying the best means to combat 

 these insect enemies. In Biological Survey Bulletin, 

 No. 37, by E. A. E. Beal, we learn that it has been esti- 

 mated that the annual loss from insect work on forest 

 trees, and their crude or finished products, amounts to 

 at least $100,000,000.00. We learn that no period in the 

 life history of the tree is exempt from insect attack, and 

 that every part, from the smallest roots to the terminal 

 buds, leaves, flowers, and fruit, may be infested by one, 

 or many species. That living, diseased, dead, or decay- 

 ing, a tree may be the home of hundreds of species and 

 thousands of individuals of insect life. 



The fondness of the Woodpeckers for the bark beetle 

 makes them of inestimable value to the spruce-timber of 

 the northeast. In many hundreds of infested trees 

 examined, at least one-half of the beetles and their 

 young had been destroyed by the birds. Estimating one 

 hundred beetles to the square foot of bark in the average 

 infested tree, and an average of sixty square feet of 

 infested bark, it is possible for each tree to yield an 

 average of six thousand individuals; one hundred trees, 

 six hundrea thousand, and so on. 



It is, therefore, plain that if one-half or two-thirds of 

 the number are destroyed by the birds and other enemies, 

 the amount of timber the remaining can kill will be 

 lessened. The work of the birds is more apparent when 

 we remember that only when there are great numbers 

 of the beetles can they overcome the resistance of the 

 living trees. 



These birds nest in holes excavated by themselves in 

 rotten trees, some species also using poles, posts, and 



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