682 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



edged. No reasons have thus far 

 developed for considering any other 

 group of the natural enemies of forest 

 insects in general, more important than 

 birds. 



Birds are known to destroy large 

 numbers of bark beetles. These small 

 beetles are among the most important 

 pests of our forests. They feed just 



ME. .- && 



Five Thousand Ants For One Meal 



it is seemingly incomprehensible but nevertheless true that the 

 flicker, one of the largest and best known of our woodpeckers, 

 often eats as many as 5,000 ants to satisfy its voracious appetite 

 for one meal. it also ea1s many other insects and wages steady 

 and energetic warfare on insects which are destructive to trees 



beneath the bark, forming tunnels 

 which in many cases girdle and thus 

 kill the trees. Few forest foes cause so 

 great damage. The spruce-destroying 

 bark beetle has been responsible for the 

 loss of many billions of feet of timber in 

 the northeastern United States. Dr. 



A. D. Hopkins, of the U. S. Bureau of 

 Entomology, who made a special study 

 of this insect and its work, gives birds 

 much credit for devouring it. He says 

 "The principal enemy of the spruce 

 destroying beetle, and otherbark-infest- 

 ing enemies of the spruce, consists of the 

 woodpeckers, which destroy, it is be- 

 lieved, from 50 to 75 per cent of the 



broods of the spruce 

 beetle in many hund- 

 reds of trees each 

 year." Mr. J. L. 

 Webb, of the same 

 Bureau, gives similar 

 testimony regarding 

 the western pine-de- 

 stroying bark beetle, 

 reporting that wood- 

 peckers had evi- 

 dently destroyed a 

 large percentage of 

 the insects in some 

 of the trees." More 

 than forty-five spe- 

 cies of birds are 

 known to feed upon 

 bark beetles, and 

 some of them occa- 

 sionally eat large 

 numbers of the in- 

 sects. For instance, 

 no fewer than 

 twenty-three of one 

 species of bark beetle 

 were found in the 

 stomach of so small 

 a bird as the chimney 

 swift, and in single 

 stomachs of the hairy 

 woodpecker, fifty 

 have been found. 

 The nighthawk and 

 the chimney swift 

 catch bark beetles 

 while they are in 

 flight, and usually 

 no doubt when they 

 are extending their 

 ranges. No fewer 

 than eighteen species of bark beetles 

 have been taken from stomachs of 

 the nighthawk and nineteen from the 

 chimney swift. 



Other beetles that are among the most 

 destructive enemies of trees are the 

 round-headed and flat-headed wood- 



