40 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



The great horned owl feeds to a small extent on different 

 kinds of insects, but his destruction of poultry, game birds 

 and mammals, and various species of small wild birds, is 

 such that the injury he commits is greater than the benefit 

 he confers. The barred owl is also regarded with disfavor 

 by many poultrymen and farmers, because of his occasional 

 visits to the farm-yard. The other small owls are beneficial, 

 subsisting as they do principally on destructive rodents and 

 noxious insects. <# 



Woodpeckers. 



The hairy and downy woodpeckers are improperly termed, 

 almost universally, by farmers, fruit growers and sportsmen, 

 "sapsuckers." The flicker is called, by many, high-holder 

 and golden-wing. Although woodpeckers make no efforts 

 to build nests as other birds generally do, they nevertheless 

 prepare with great care and labor equally suitable recepta- 

 cles for their eggs and young. Woodpeckers lay their 

 eggs, which are white, and usually -number from four to 

 six, on chips and bits of rotten wood in cavities which they 

 excavate with their powerful and chisel-like or wedge-shaped 

 bills, in the dead limbs or trunks of trees. These holes or 

 nesting-places — oftentimes dug to a considerable depth — 

 at the mouth are often just sufficiently large to permit the 

 birds to pass in and out : from the entrance downward the 

 diameter of these wooden burrows increases in size. The 

 tongue of all woodpeckers found in this region, with one 

 exception, viz., the yellow-bellied, is capable of being pro- 

 truded beyond the point of the bill to a considerable extent. 

 The cornua or horns of the tongue, extending backward, 

 curl up over the back of the skull ; these horns are envel- 

 oped in muscles by the action of which the tongue is thrust 

 out. This singular arrangement can easily be demonstrated 

 by simply taking hold of the end of the tongue of a flicker, 

 we will say, and, as you move it backward and forward, 

 place the finger on the top of the bird's head, and at once a 

 peculiar, worm-like movement will be discovered as the 

 horns run back and forth between the skin and bony cover- 

 ing of the head, beneath the finger. The end of the tongue 

 in woodpeckers, other than the species above mentioned, is 



