EASTERN" HAIRY WOODPECKER 17 



The Juvenal plumage is worn but a short time; the molt into the 

 first winter plumage is accomplished between July and October. 

 This first winter plumage is much like that of the adult in both sexes, 

 but the white spots are not quite so pure white, and the red nuchal 

 patch of the male is duller and often interrupted. Adults have a 

 complete postnuptial molt in August and September and perhaps a 

 partial prenuptial molt in spring. 



Food. — Various studies of the food habits of the hairy woodpeckers 

 show that these birds are among our most useful birds and especially 

 valuable as protectors of our forest and shade trees and orchards. 

 More than 75 percent of their food consists of injurious insects, while 

 the amount of useful insects and cultivated fruits that they destroy is 

 insignificant. Prof. F. E. L. Beal (1911) has published the most 

 exhaustive report on this subject, based on the study of 382 stomachs 

 collected during every month in the year and from many parts of the 

 range of the species, including practically all of the races. He says : 

 "In the first analysis the food divides into 77.67 p(>rcent of animal 

 matter and 22.33 of vegetable. The animal food consists of insects, 

 with a few spiders and millepeds; the vegetable part is made up of 

 fruit, seeds, and a number of miscellaneous substances." Of the ani- 

 mal food, hft says : "The largest item in the annual diet of the hairy 

 woodpecker consists of the larvae of cerambycid and buprestid bee- 

 tles, with a few lucanids and perhaps some other wood borers. These 

 insects constitute over 31 percent of the food and are eaten in every 

 month of the year. * * * q^^ stomach contained 100 of these lar- 

 vae and 83 and 50, respectively, were taken from two others. Of the 

 382 stomachs, 204, or 53 percent, contained these grubs, and 27 of 

 them held no other food. Other beetles amount to a little more than 

 9 percent." 



Ants rank second in importance, amounting to a little more than 17 

 percent, and are taken every month in the year; other Hymenoptera 

 are eaten in very small quantities and irregularly. Caterpillars are 

 the next most important item, many of them wood-boring species, 

 amounting to a little less than 10 percent. "Prof. F. M. Webster 

 states that he has seen a hairy woodpecker successfully peck a hole 

 through the parchment-like covering of the cocoon of a Cecropia 

 moth and devour the contents. On examining more than 20 cocoons 

 in a grove of box elders, he found only 2 uninjured," according to 

 Professor Beal (1911), who adds that bugs (Hemiptera) and plant 

 lice (aphids) form only a small part of the food, and says: "Orthop- 

 tera, that is, grasshoppers, crickets, and cockroaches, are rarely eaten 

 by the hairy. A few eggs, probably those of tree crickets, and the 

 Qg'g cases (u5theca) of cockroaches, constitute the bidk of this food. 

 These with a few miscellaneous insects amount to a little more than 



