THE- WOODPECKERS: BIRD FRIENDS OF OUR FORESTS 



687 



the present article, and particularly the various forms 

 of beaks, tails, and feet. 



An authority at hand truly remarks that "with the 

 possible exception of the Crow, no birds have been sub- 

 jected to so much critici'sm ais .the Wocxipeckers. When 

 they are seen scrambling over fruit trees and their 

 holes are found in the bark, it is concluded that they 

 must be doing harm. The 

 Woodpeckers, except a few 

 species, rarely disfigure a 

 healthy tree. But when they 

 find a tree infested by wood- 

 boring larvae, they locate 

 the insects accurately, draw 

 them out and devour them. 

 If, in the years that follow, 

 the borings formerly occu- 

 pied by these insects are 

 used by a colony of ants, 

 they in their turn are dug 

 out and destroyed." 



All the year round 

 spring, summer, autumn and 

 winter woodpeckers are 

 thus doing the farmer an in- 

 calculable service, not to 

 mention the thousands of 

 barrels of insects, pupae, 

 grubs, and the rest that they 

 utterly destroy, in the way 

 of food, these preying upon 

 the best class of trees that 

 constitute our forests from 

 one end of the country to the 

 other from east to west 

 and from north to south. 



Owing to the fact that the 

 food of these birds may be 

 obtained by them at all sea- 

 sons of the year, the sever- 

 est winters notwithstanding, 

 woodpeckers are less in- 

 clined to be migratory as 

 compared with the regular 

 migrants, and their insect- 

 destroying profiensities are 

 rendered all the more exten- 

 sive and valuable. 



All of our woodpeckers 

 lay pure white, glossy eggs 

 ranging from three or four 

 to as many as eight in num- 

 ber, no attempt being made 

 to construct a nest. At the best they allow a handful 

 or so of the chips they make in excavating the nesting 

 cavity in the selected tree to remain in the bottom, and 

 upon these the clutch rests during the period of incuba- 

 tion. No particular species of tree seems to be preferred 

 by any of the various kinds of woodpeckers for a future 



THE SAPSUCKERS 



Fig. 6. A specimen of Williamson's Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus 

 thyroideus) in the exhibition series of the United States 

 National Museum. Photographed by the author, with tree- 

 trunk substituted for museum stand. Courtesy of the Museum. 



home; and if for any reason trees are undesirable or 

 scarce, as in burnt-over districts for instance, some of 

 the birds of this family, as the Golden-winged Wood- 

 pecker, will, without hesitation, burrow into some con- 

 venient bank, and use the further end of the excavation 

 as a safe place to rear its young. 

 Through their flight, most woodpeckers can be recog- 

 nized at a distance as being 

 birds of that family; for the 

 majority of them progress 

 fl\ing in an undulatory 

 line, much after the fashion 

 of our familiar little gold- 

 finch. This mode of flight 

 is well seen in all of the 

 black and white woodpeck- 

 ers, and still better in the 

 flicker, as that species is so 

 often observed at long dis- 

 tances from the forests. 



Of all the woodpeckers of 

 the Ijird fauna of this coun- 

 try, no species can in any 

 way compare with the Ivory- 

 bill ; it outclasses each and 

 all of them in size, beauty, 

 and economic importance, in 

 so far as its habits affect 

 man's interests. (Fig. 1.) 

 It is a bird of great natural 

 vigor, and has a length of 

 some twenty-one inches or 

 slightly more. Either sex 

 has a glossy, blue - black 

 plumage, only the male pos- 

 sessing a conspicuous scarlet 

 crest faced in front with 

 black. A zig - zag white 

 stripe, pointed at either end, 

 runs from just below the 

 eye, on either side, to the 

 middle of the back between 

 the shoulders. The feathers 

 of the distal parts of the 

 wings are also white, while 

 its powerful, chisel-like bill 

 is of an ivory tint, as the 

 common name of the bird 

 implies. Unfortunately, 

 though apparently not espe- 

 cially through man's agency, 

 the species is for some rea- 

 son gradually disappearing, 

 and is, at this writing, to be met with, with any certainty, 

 only in the trackless cypress forests and swamps of the 

 southeastern parts of the United States, from south- 

 eastern North Carolina, westward to Texas, in the kind 

 of country it prefers in the area thus included. Most 

 frequently it is found in certain parts of Florida. Per- 



