NORTHERlsr PILEATED WOODPECKER 183 



and when I examined his work after he had left, later in the day, I found 

 some chips near the stub, which were three inches long and one inch wide. 

 Others half this size had been thrown out on the snow a distance of four feet. 

 The hole was on the west side and measured six inches across and ten inches 

 long, and extended to a depth of six inches toward the heart of the stub. 

 There was another hole six inches square on the south side. The bird seemed 

 to chisel out a section three inches wide across the hole and then move down 

 and cut out another section. The two holes were dug in about two hours. 



Of summertime feeding Ora W. Knight (1908) says: "Except the 

 Flicker this is the only species of Woodpecker I have observed feed- 

 ing on the ground, but this species likes to tear open the ant hills 

 found in open places in the woods and feed on the ants and their 

 larvpe." He also says that in the fall these birds eat "dogwood 

 berries, choke and black cherries and other wild fruits and berries, 

 also beechnuts and acorns for which it has a decided fondness." 



Dr. Sutton (1930) says: 



The food of this species in Pennsylvania, according to official examination 

 of four stomachs, is largely of ants. The stomach and crop of a male speci- 

 men weighing nine ounces, collected at Northumberland, Northumberland 

 County, on November 10, 1928, contained 469 carpenter ants {Camponotus 

 herculaneus) , most of them so recently swallowed as to permit of counting 

 them easily. The stomach of a female taken at Aitch, Huntingdon County, 

 on November 30, 1928, contained the remains of at least 153 carpenter ants, 

 one small carabid beetle, the legs of a small bug (apparently a squash-bug), 

 and 17 wild grapes, swallowed whole. 



F. E. L. Beal (1911) gave the results of examination of the con- 

 tents of 80 stomachs collected far and wide throughout the range of 

 the species. Animal food amounted to 72.88 percent; vegetable, 

 27.12 percent. Beetles made up 22.01 percent of the total, and ants 

 39.91 percent. As many as 2,600 ants were counted in a single 

 stomach. The ants were "mostly of the larger species that live in 

 decaying timber." Ants and beetles together made up the bulk of 

 the animal food (61.92 percent). 



The Biological Survey (A. L. Nelson) has kindly made reply to 

 my inquiry concerning stomach examinations of the subspecies 

 dbieticola alone. Data were available from 23 specimens, three col- 

 lected in January, two in June, two in July, six in October, eight 

 in November, and two in December. They were collected, two in 

 Canada, two in New Brunswick, four in New York, four in Pennsyl- 

 vania, six in Michigan, two in Illinois, two in Minnesota, and one in 

 Iowa. 



Animal food amounted to 83 percent of the whole; vegetable, 17 

 percent, with but a trace of gravel (one stomach only). The chief 

 item was ants, principally large black ants, such as Camponotus 

 and Grematog aster; this item alone constituted 60 percent of the 

 whole. The animal food otherwise consisted of a variety of beetles 

 and of a very few (2 percent) caterpillars. The vegetable food 



