102 Wild Bird Guests 



Here again we must confine ourselves to a few 

 examples. The downy woodpecker, which has 

 a wide range and which is known to all of us, is 

 one of the most useful members of this useful 

 family. We need only watch him for a while as 

 he works in our fruit and shade trees, to realize 

 this, but as some of us haven't the time to prove 

 it for ourselves, it is well to know that specialists 

 have already proved it for us. From the contents 

 of 140 stomachs examined by the U. S. Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, it is shown that three- 

 fourths of the downy's food consists of insects. 

 Seventeen specimens examined in Wisconsin were 

 found to have eaten 40 insect larvae, including 

 20 wood-boring grubs, 3 caterpillars, 7 ants, 4 

 beetles, i chrysalid, no small bugs, and a spider; 

 also a few acorns and small seeds, and a little 

 woody fiber which had probably been taken in 

 accidentally with the food. Fanny Hardy Eck- 

 storm, in her charming little book, The Wood- 

 peckers, says of him: "Downy works at his self- 

 appointed task in our orchards, summer and 

 winter, as regular as a policeman on his beat. 

 But he is much better than a policeman, for he 

 acts as judge, jury, jailer, and jail. All the evi- 

 dence he asks against an insect is to find him 

 loafing about the premises. " The hairy wood- 

 pecker is simply a larger edition of the downy, 



