﻿Common Bird^ in Relation to Agrieultui^e. 297 



The two species are as nearly identical in food habits 

 as their environment will allow. The flickers, while 

 genuine woodpeckers, differ somewhat in habits from the 

 rest of the family, and are frequently seen upon the 

 ground searching for food. Like the downy and hairy 

 woodpeckers, they eat wood-boring grubs and ants, but 

 the number of ants eaten is much greater. Two of the 

 flickers' stomachs examined were completely filled with 

 ants, each stomach containing more than 3,000 individuals. 

 These ants belonged to species which live in the ground, 

 and it is these insects for which the flicker is searching 

 when running about in the grass, although some grass- 

 hoppers are also taken. 



The red-headed woodpecker {Melaiieiyes crythrocephalus) 

 is well known east of the Kocky Mountains, but is rather 

 rare in New England. Unlike some of the other species, 

 it prefers fence posts and telegraph poles to trees as a 

 foraging ground. Its food therefore naturally differs 

 from that of the preceding species, and consists largely of 

 adult beetles and wasps, which it frequently captures on 

 the wing, after the fashion of flycatchers. Grasshoppers 

 also form an important part of the food. The redhead 

 has a peculiar habit of selecting very large beetles, 

 as shown by the presence of fragments of several of 

 the largest species in the stomachs. Among the beetles 

 were quite a number of predaceous ground beetles, and 

 unfortunately some tiger beetles, which are useful insects. 

 The redhead has been accused of robbing the nests of 

 other birds ; also of attacking young birds and poultry and 

 pecking out their brains, but as the stomachs showed 

 little evidence to substantiate this charge it is probable 

 that the habit is rather exceptional. 



It has been customary to speak of the smaller wood- 

 peckers as " sapsuckers," under the belief that they drill 

 holes in the bark of trees for the purpose of drinking- the 

 sap and eating the inner bark. Close observation, 



