Some Common Birds Useful io the Farmer. 25 
Nearly a fourth of the birds’ total food is composed of ants. These insects 
are generally annoying and often very injurious, especially on account of their 
damage to stored products and because of their habit of fostering destructive 
plant lice. More than a fifth of the nighthawk’s food consists of June bugs, 
dung beetles, and other beetles of the leaf-chafer family. These are the adults 
of white grubs, noted pests, and even as adults many members of the family 
are decidedly harmful. 
Numerous other injurious beetles, as click beetles, wood borers, and weevils, 
are relished. True bugs, moths, flies, grasshoppers, and crickets also are 
important elements of the food. Several species of mosquitoes, including the 
transmitter of malaria, are eaten. Other well-known pests consumed by the 
nighthawk are Colorado Potato beetles, cucumber beetles, rice, clover-leaf, and 
cotton-boll weevils, bill bugs, bark beetles, squash bugs, and moths of the cotton 
worm. 
Nighthawks are much less numerous than formerly, .chiefly because of 
wanton shooting. They are given full legal protection almost everywhere, and 
citizens should see that the law is 
obeyed. The bird is far too useful 
and attractive to be persecuted. 
THE WOODPECKERS. 
Five or six species of woodpeck- 
ers are familiarly known through- 
out 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 holes in “/ 
the bark, it is concluded that they 
must be doing harm. Careful ob- 
servers, however, have noticed 
that, excepting a single species, 
these birds rarely leave any con- 
spicuous mark on a healthy tree, 
except when it is affected by wood- Fig. 20.—Hairy woodpecker. Length, about 9 
boring larve, which are accurately inches. 
located, dislodged, and devoured 
by th odpecker. : 
Two. ef he baer iew woodpeckers, the hairy -woodpecker ™ (fig. 20) and the 
i i i t of the 
er,” including their races, range over the greater par 
ie Noa any differ chiefly in size, their colors being practically the 
Same. The males like those of many other woodpeckers, are distinguished by 
a scarlet patch on the head. An examination of many stomachs of these eee 
Species shows that from two-thirds to three-fourths of the food consists o 
insects, chiefly noxious kinds. Wood-boring beetles, both adults and larvee, are 
conspicuous and with them are associated seed ae aon oe ec 
; in i at liv 
that burrow into trees. Next in importance are the ants a Lyi 
i d eaten in great quantities. 
wood, all of which are sought by woodpeckers and : 
; i imber, for if they find a small spot o 
Many ants are particularly harmful to timber, 6 
i they enlarge the hole, and, as 
decay in the vacant burrow of a wood borer, ae 
i i i tinue to eat away the wood unti e 
their colony is always on the increase, con ee eee 
whole trunk is honeycombed. Moreover, they are no see eA nye 
1 ursue their career of destruction unmo 
her ae Re been with beaks and eee tua fein eee 
i r them. It is thus evident that woo ; 
eae ee oe To them more than to any other agency we owe the preser. 
vation of timber from hordes of destructive insects. 
5% Dryobates villosus. 57 Dryobates pubescens. 
