Woodpeckers and June-Bugs 197 



hard and indigestible parts. They dispatched this work with much dexterity, 

 without using their feet to confine the insect; they laid it on the stump, and, with 

 the bill alone, succeeded in removing the undesirable parts. 



The kinds of insects whose remains were found there was a study. They 

 were almost as gaudy as the Woodpecker himself. A pair of democratic English 

 Sparrows were rearing a brood near by. I saw them feed their young a hundred 

 times a day, and every time they brought a plain grasshopper, which the neigh- 

 boring field supplied in unlimited numbers. But the grasshopper formed an 

 insignificant part of the diet of the aristocratic Woodpeckers. Woodpeckers can 

 undoubtedly distinguish between colors; they find the ruddiest apple and the 

 rosiest peach in the orchard. In like manner, they seem to be attracted by bright- 

 colored insects. They prefer beautiful butterflies, silky moths, and brilhant 

 beetles. The favorite food of this pair was the June-bug; not the plain brown 

 beetle of the northern states, but the beautiful green and gold June-bug of the 

 South, — associated in the mind with sultry summer days, and ripe blackberries, 

 on which he feeds. He is the dehght of the small child, who harnesses him by 

 a thread, when he promptly takes to wing and hums and buzzes gloriously at 

 the end of his tether. He never sulks nor tires. Sometimes, by a sudden tack, 

 he entangles himself in the golden curls of his captor, or wraps his cord around its 

 little bare legs. But, free him from his entanglement, give him a gentle swing 

 around the head, and he is off again at the circumference of his circle. He is 

 unrivaled in the child's affections, even by the hghtning-bug, which he chases 

 so gleefully in the twilight of a summer day. 



I found not only the dismembered wing-covers of the June-bug around the 

 Woodpecker's meat-block, but, in a pit on the splintered top of the stump, I 

 found a live June-bug. And what a prison he was in! It was a thousand times 

 worse than the Black Hole of Calcutta. They had turned him on his back and 

 pounded him into a cavity that so exactly fitted him that he could move nothing 

 but his legs, which were plying hke weaver's shuttles in the empty air. I always 

 found the June-bugs deposited on their backs, and always alive. The next 

 maple beyond the stump had a small scar on the side, over which the bark had 

 not entirely met, leaving a fissure a little wider at the top than at the bottom. In 

 this fissure they had deposited two June-bugs, with their backs to the tree. The 

 lower beetle they had forced down into the fissure until they were unable to 

 recover him when wanted, and were forced to take him out piecemeal. 



Wishing to see if they would allow their young a berry or a bit of fruit, I 

 brought from the orchard and deposited on their stump a peach and a bunch of 

 ten blackberries. Next morning the old birds consumed them all for their break- 

 fast; but the little ones were not allowed so much as a taste, being strictly confined 

 to an insect diet. 



