THE WOODPECKERS, KINGFISHERS, AND CUCKOOS. 185 



bark of apple-trees, it does not revisit them to suck the sap, 

 according to the habit of the last-named bird ; and the holes 

 seem usually not to injure the tree. Seventeen Wisconsin 

 specimens had eaten forty insect larva?, including twenty 

 wood-boring grubs and three caterpillars, seven ants, four 

 beetles, a chrysalid, one hundred and ten small bugs, and a 

 spider, together with a few acorns and small seeds, and a 

 little woody fibre apparently taken by accident along with the 

 grubs. Three-fourths of the food of one hundred and forty 

 specimens examined by the Department of Agriculture con- 

 sisted of insects. Nearly one-fourth consisted of ants, taken 

 chiefly from those w r hich are attending aphides or burrowing 

 in wood. Audubon states that in autumn these woodpeckers 

 eat poke-berries and wild grasses. Mr. W. E. Cram observed 

 one of these birds opening the seed cases of mullein in Au- 

 gust. u I found that seed vessels that contained grubs were 

 brown, while those on the same stalk free from them were 

 still green, and observed that the woodpecker only opened 

 the brown ones." Dr. D. S. Kellicott has reported that the 

 downy woodpecker has been "most industrious in Columbus, 

 Ohio, in boring for the larva? of the maple aegerian," a pest 

 of shade-trees. Mr. A. W. Butler has " often found them 

 feeding upon sunflower seeds, of which they are very fond." 



The young birds are fed with insects, ants forming a large 

 percentage of their diet. 



The only injury that can be charged to the account of this 

 bird is that of spreading the seeds of poison-ivy, the berries 

 of .which it eats. The seeds pass through the body unharmed 

 as to their germinating qualities. Probably this is a chief reason 

 why these plants are so generally found growing around the 

 bases of trees. 



The FLICKER, although one of the woodpeckers, has habits 

 quite different from the majority of its tribe. Instead of 

 drilling holes in trees for a living, it gets most of its food from 

 the ground. Its structure, especially that of its bill, is modified 



