48 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



fall web worm and the canker worms are all greedily- 

 eaten. Mr. F. H. Mosher saw a yellow-billed cuckoo go to 

 a nest of fall web worms, tear it open and take twenty-two 

 of them in a few minutes. Many such occurrences as this 

 are now on record. The cuckoo should be welcome every- 

 where. 



Woodpeckers (Picidce) . 



Thanks to the writings of foresters, ornithologists and 

 entomologists, the woodpeckers, which were long considered 

 fair game for the gunner, are now recognized almost every- 

 where as useful birds. Our largest common species, the 

 flicker, is so fond of ants that it will alight on an ant hill, 

 thrust in its bill to bring out the inmates, and then gorge 

 itself on the agitated ants as they swarm from the opening. 

 Ants form a large portion of the food of many wookpeckers. 

 The sapsucker was considered an injurious bird for many 

 years, but Frank Bolles showed that its tapping trees ordi- 

 narily produced no serious injury. Some farmers will 

 persist in applying the term sapsuckers to the black-and- 

 white woodpeckers. Ornithologists have always claimed 

 that these birds are not sapsuckers, but now it seems that 

 possibly the farmers have not been so much in error after 

 all. In regard to this, I beg leave to submit the following 

 field notes, from my friend Mr. C. E. Bailey of Winchendon, 

 dated Maiden, Mass., April 6, 1899 : "At 12.30 I found a 

 downy woodpecker, and watched him till 2.45 ; he took 

 three larves from a maple stub, just under the bark. He 

 next tapped two small swamp maples, four and six feet from 

 the ground, and spent most of the time taking sap. He 

 tapped the tree by picking it a few times very lightly ; it 

 looked like a slight cut, slanting a little. The bird would 

 sit and peck the sap out of the lower part of the cut. The 

 cut was so small the sap did not collect very fast. The bird 

 would go and sit for a long time in a large tree and not 

 move, then it would come back and take more sap. It did 

 this three times while I was watching it. It did not care to 

 take any food but the sap. I could get within six feet of the 

 bird without any trouble when it was taking sap. It then 

 left and went into a large tree, and I lost it ; but if I had 

 stayed by the tree it tapped I think it would have come back 



