14(J DAVET'S PRIMER 



THE WOODPECKER. 



Farmers are prone to look upon woodpeckers with 

 suspicion. When the birds are seen scrambling over fruit 

 trees and pecking holes in the bark, it is concluded that 

 they are doing harm. Careful observers, however, 

 have noticed that, excepting a single species, these 

 birds rarely leave any conspicuous mark on a healthy 

 tree, except when it is affected by wood-boring larvas, 

 which are accurately located, dislodged, and devoured 

 by the woodpecker. 



The male birds are distinguished by a scarlet patch 

 on the head. An examination of many stomachs of 

 these two birds shows that from two-thirds to three- 

 fourths of the food consists of insects, chiefly noxious. 

 Wood-boring beetles, both adults and larvae, are con- 

 spicuous, and with them are associated many cater- 

 pillars, mostly species that burrow into trees. Next in 

 importance are the ants that live in decaying wood, all 

 of which are sought by woodpeckers and eaten in great 

 quantities. Many ants are particularly harmful to 

 timber, for if they find a small spot of decay in the 

 vacant burrow of some woodborer, they enlarge the 

 hole, and as their colony is always on the increase, 

 continue to eat away the wood until the whole trunk is 

 honeycombed. Moreover, these insects are not accessible 

 to other birds, and could pursue their career of destruc- 

 tion unmolested were it not for the woodpeckers, whose 

 beaks and tongues are especially fitted for digging out 

 and devouring them. It is thus evident that woodpeckers 

 are great conservators of forests. To them, more than 



