LAND BIRDS. 365 
nuts, but hunting insect larve in decayed wood in the same manner as other 
woodpeckers. 
_ The food in summer is very varied and is about equally divided between an- 
imal and vegetable substances. One hundred and one stomachs examined 
at the Department of Agriculture, and reported on by Professor Beal, give 
the following results: Animal food 50 percent, vegetable food 47 percent, 
sand and gravel 3 percent. All but 1 percent of the animal food consisted 
of insects, the remaining 1 percent being made up of spiders and myriapods. 
The insect food included the following items: Ants 11 percent, 
beetles 31 percent, grasshoppers 5 per cent, caterpillars 1 percent, plant 
lice 1 percent. Unfortunately a very large part of the beetles eaten (24 
percent) consisted of the predaceous families Carabide and Cicindelide 
(the ground beetles and tiger beetles), which are mainly beneficial. The 
ants are of doubtful utility, so that practically the main good done in the 
consumption of insects lies in the caterpillars, grasshoppers and plant lice 
eaten, which aggregate only 7 percent of the food. To quote Prof. Beal 
‘A preference for large beetles is one of the pronounced characteristics of 
this woodpecker. Weevils were found in 15 stomachs, and in several 
cases aS Many as ten were present. Remains of Carabid beetles were found 
in 44 stomachs to an average of 24 percent of the contents of those that 
contained them, or ten percent of all. The fact that 43 percent of all the 
birds taken had eaten these beetles, some of them to the extent of 16 
individuals, shows a decided fondness for these insects, and taken with the 
fact that 5 stomachs contained Cicindelids or tiger beetles forms a rather 
strong indictment against the bird.” In Tazewell county, Il., Professor 
Forbes found it eating cankerworms freely in orchards overrun with them. 
The 47 per cent of vegetable food covered 33 percent of fruit, much of it 
cultivated, and a considerable amount of corn, much of it in the milk. 
Among the cultivated fruits eaten freely were apples, pears, cherries, black- 
berries, raspberries and strawberries, besides many wild fruits. The 
Red-head is also known to eat both cultivated and wild grapes in quantity. 
During autumn and winter it eats large numbers of acorns and beech nuts 
and sometimes stores these away in large quantities in hollow trees, fence- 
posts and similar cavities. 
Practically the only favorable statement. that can be made in regard 
to the vegetable food of this bird is the fact that it does not seem to eat 
the berries of poison sumac or poison ivy, and so is not one of the birds 
responsible for the distribution of these noxious plants. 
One disagreeable trait which has been observed several times is its habit 
of eating the eggs and even the young of other birds, and this not always 
for the sake of getting them out of coveted nesting places, but apparently 
from hunger, or from mere mischief. Dr. R. H. Wolcott writes that he has 
seen this bird destroy the eggs of the Wood Thrush and suspected it of other 
depredations. Bendire gives several instances of what he calls its “cana- 
balistic tendency.” ; 
Captain Bendire describes its notes as follows: ‘Its ordinary call-note 
is a loud tchur-tchur; when chasing each other a shrill note like charr-charr 
is frequently uttered, an alarm is expressed by a harsh rattling note as 
well as by one, which, according vo Mr. Otto Widmann, is indistinguishable 
from the note of the tree frog. He tells me that both bird and frog some- 
times answer each other. * * * From an economic view it appears 
to me certainly to do fully as much if not more harm than good, and I 
consider it less worthy of protection than any of our woodpeckers, the 
Yellow-breasted Sapsucker not excepted.” 
