146 



PROTECTION AGAINST BIRDS. 



<1. Destruction of Telegraph-Posts. 

 The great woodpecker as well as the 

 black and green woodpeckers share 

 in this damage. Attacks have been 

 observed both on coniferous or oaken 

 posts, whether kyanised, or not, and 

 generally commence at an old screw- 

 hole. In 1881, the Director of Post- 

 Offices for the German Empire issued 

 a circular order that all holes in 

 telegraph-posts should be filled with 

 wooden plugs, and that holes freshly 

 made by woodpeckers should be at once 

 smeared with tar. Injuries done by 

 woodpeckers to the wooden shingle 

 roofs of forest lodges and other solitary 

 houses have been noticed, but are rare 

 and unimportant. 



4. Utility of Woodpeckers, 

 a. Destruction of Insects. 



The injurious insects, which wood- 

 peckers devour, live either in or on the 

 surface of the soil, or in the wood or 

 bark of trees, and the latter kinds are 

 preferred. 



Woodpeckers chiefly seek animal food 

 from April till late summer. They 

 capture cockchafers, pick grubs from 

 fruit, and eat the pupse of moths and 

 sawflies; they dig into ant-hills, con- 

 suming numbers of ants, which are 

 said by Yarrell to be the chief summer 

 food of the green woodpecker, and they 

 peck holes into the ground in search of 

 cockchafer grubs, wire-worms, etc. For 

 c Ditto, bark entirely re- the most part, however, they hunt on 



moved. 



trees for weevils, bark-beetles, longicorn- 

 beetles and their grubs, sawfly larvae, gall-insects, spiders, etc. 



Fig. 58. Scots pine girdled 

 by woodpecker. 



rt Ring, with bark still 



remaining. 

 b Ditto, bark half removed. 



