.-Ill 



UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO. 



of view. They live chiefly upon fish, mostly small species of little value, and 

 also take some mice and frogs. Even half -grown young are fed on fish (98). 

 It has been estimated that 1 pair takes 6,000 fish in a season, but sometimes 

 they take "vast numbers of grasshoppers, crickets, frogs and lizards" (99). 



PICI Woodpeckers, Etc. 



Excepting the sapsuckers, all woodpeckers are considered, under or- 

 dinary conditions, beneficial, and some of them highly useful (100). On an 

 average 65% t>f the food of woodpeckers consists of insects (101), largely 

 ants, caterpillars and beetles, especially the wood-boring larvae of beetles 

 and moths which are destructive to trees. Their prey includes the codling 

 moth larvse, a great enemy of orchards (102). At least half of the spruce- 

 bark beetles of the northeastern states are eaten by woodpeckers (103). One 

 flicker stomach contained 5,000 ants and 2 others contained 3,000 each (104). 

 The following table, combined from 2 tables in Deal's report, shows the 

 percentages (omitting fractions) of animal matter, vegetable matter, ants 

 and beetles in the food of various species (105) : 



(98) Judd, V. S. Dept. Agric., Yearbook for 1900, p. 428. 



(99) Sullivan, Kas. St. Agric. Coll., Agric. Educ., Vol. Ill, No. 7, p. 34. 



(100) Beal, Preliminary Report on the Food of Woodpeckers, U. S. Dept. Agric., 

 Div. Orn. and Mam., Bull. No. 7, 189"5 ; Food of the Woodpeckers of the United States, 

 U. S. Biol. Surv., Bull. No. 37, 1911. McAtee, Woodpeckers in Relation to Trees and 

 Wood Products, U. S. Biol. Surv., Bull. No. 39, 1911. Lucas, The Tongues of Wood- 

 peckers, Div. Orn. & Mam., Bull. No. 7, pp. 35-39 ; The Tongues of Birds, Ann. Rept. 

 U. S. Nat. Mus. for 1895 ; pp. 1001-1020. 



(101) Beal, U. S. Dept. Agric., Yearbook for 1908, p. 343. 



(102) McAtee, U. S. Dept. Agric, Yearbook for 1911, p. 239 



(103) Hopkins, U. S. Bur. Entom., Bull. No. 28 new ser., pp. 23, 25, 26. 



(104) Beal, U. S. Dept. Agric,, Yearbook for 1900, p. 294. 



(105) Beal, U. S. Biol. Surv., Bull. No. 37, p. 10. 



