22 BIRDS OF CALIFORNIA AFFECTING FRUIT INDUSTRY. 
Beetles amounted in January to 3.5 percent, in November to 1.4 
percent, in December to 0.7 percent, with none at all in the other 
months. The average for the whole year is only 0.8 percent. No 
larvee of wood-borers were found, and apparently this bird never aids 
the hairy woodpecker in the good work of destroying these creatures. 
The species eaten were mostly small leaf beetles (Chrysomelide), with 
a few weevils. 
Hemiptera (bugs) and Diptera (flies) were entirely wanting in the 
stomachs examined. Caterpillars were present in two stomachs, both 
taken in October. They amounted to 5 percent of the food of that 
month. One stomach taken in February was entirely filled by a large 
centipede. 
Vegetable food.—The vegetable part of the food of the red-breasted 
sapsucker falls naturally into three divisions—fruit, seeds, and other 
vegetable matter. As the bird is not present in the fruit-growing 
sections of the State when fruit is ripe, it can not make great inroads 
upon the orchard. While fruit aggregates nearly 17 percent, it is. 
mostly wild or of worthless varieties. Figs, whose seeds and pulp 
were found in one stomach, were the only cultivated kind identified. 
Several stomachs contained berries of the pepper tree (Schinus molle), 
one contained cascara berries (Rhamnus californicus), and in several 
were unidentified seeds and pulp. Seeds amount to about 9 percent, 
and are those of the poison oak, with a few others. The miscellaneous 
item is made up almost entirely of cambium, or the inner bark of trees, 
and amounts to about 11 percent of the whole food. 
SUMMARY. 
It is evident that the red-breasted sapsucker falls far below some 
other members of its family in economic importance. It does not 
prey upon the worst pests of the orchard and forest, but on the other 
hand it does not feed on the products of the orchard or farm. It 
injures trees by tapping holes in the bark and by stripping it off in 
patches, for which reason this sapsucker may be considered more 
harmful than beneficial. 
CALIFORNIA WOODPECKER. 
( Melaner pes formicivorus bairdi.) 
The California woodpecker is distributed throughout a large part 
of the State, but is in the main confined to places where there is.an 
abundance of large oaks—trees for which it appears to have a special 
liking and from which it derives much of its subsistence. Wherever 
it lives it is usually abundant and the most noticeable element of the 
bird fauna, attracting attention both by its loud cries and by its con- 
spicuous flight. It is one of the few woodpeckers whose food is more 
largely vegetable than animal. 
