﻿Common Birds in Relatioii to Agriculture. 295 



As in the case of the black-billed cuckoo, most of the 

 caterpillars belonged to hairy species and many of them 

 were of large size. One stomach contained 12 American 

 tent caterpillars; another 217 fall webworms. The 

 beetles were distributed amono^ several families, but all 

 more or less harmful to agriculture. In the same stomach 

 which contained the tent caterpillars were two Colorado 

 potato beetles ; in another were three goldsmith beetles 

 and remains of several other large bettles. Besides 

 ordinary grasshoppers were several katy-dids and tree 

 crickets. The sawflies were in the larval stage, in which 

 they resemble caterpillars so closely that they are 

 commonly called false caterpillars by entomologists, and 

 perhaps this likeness may be the reason the cuckoos 

 eat them so freely. The bugs consisted of stink bugs and 

 cicadas or dog-day harvest liies, with the exception of one 

 wheel bug, which was the only useful insect eaten, unless 

 the spiders be counted as such. 



THE WOODPECKERS. 



Five or six species of woodpeckers are familiarly known 

 throughout the eastern United States, and in the west are 

 replaced by others of similar habits. Several species 

 remain in the northern States through the entire year^ 

 while others are more or less migratory. 



Farmers are prone to look upon woodpeckers with 

 suspicion. When the birds are seen scrambling over 

 fruit trees and pecking at the bark, and fresh holes 

 found in the tree, it is concluded that they are doing 

 harm. Careful observers, however, have noticed that^ 

 excepting a single sjjecies, these birds rarely leave any 

 important mark on a healthy tree, but that when a tree is 

 affected by wood-boring larvie the insects are accurately 

 located, dislodged and devoured. In case the holes from 

 which the borers are taken are afterwards occupied 



