136 INJURIOUS INSECTS OF 1904. 



numbers of insects in summer, but more than one-half the winter 

 food consists of insects and their eggs. The eggs of plant lice make 

 up one-fifth of the entire food, in fact the destruction of these eggs 

 on fruit and shade trees is the chief beneficial work of this bird in the 

 winter, and the good it does in this way must not be under-estimated. 

 Examinations of stomachs or crops of these birds has shown that 

 sometimes more than four hundred and fifty eggs of plant lice are 

 consumed by one bird in one day. Eggs of canker worms and tent 

 caterpillars are also eaten. Four stomachs or crops examined showed, 

 as the result of a single day's feed, one thousand and twenty-eight 

 eggs of canker worms. Four others contained about six hundred 

 eggs of canker worms and a hundred and five mature female canker 

 worms. Surely if any bird deserves protection, it is this one. Such 

 a familiar bird hardly calls for a description. Head, back of neck and 

 throat black ; sides of head and neck whitish ; breast white ; sides 

 washed with brownish yellow. Length about five and one-half inch- 

 es. Nests in old stumps and decayed trees, preferably birch ; holes 

 not far from ground generally. In addition to its cheerful "chic-a- 

 dee-dee" it has a number of other notes, some of them extremely 

 musical. 



DOWNY WOODPECKER. 



A true benefactor in that its food consists almost entirely of injuri- 

 ous insects, and it is with us both winter and summer. It is the 

 smallest of our Woodpeckers, being only six and four-fifths inches 

 long. Black above ; a scarlet band on back of neck ; white on mid- 

 dle of back ; under part white ; central feathers of tail black ; the 

 outer ones white with blarck markings ; wings black spotted with 

 white. The female lacks the scarlet patch on back of neck. It nests 

 in holes in trees. Often seen in winter in company with Nuthatches, 

 Chickadees and Brown Creepers. What little vegetable food it eats 

 consists of seeds of poison ivy, sumac, etc. Seventeen Wisconsin 

 specimens had eaten forty insect larvae, twenty wood-boring grubs, 

 three caterpillars, seven ants, four beetles, a chrysalid, one hundred 



