164 BIRDS OF ALABAMA 



ville, Leighton, Florence, Muscle Shoals, Ardell, and Hayne- 

 ville. In the pine flats of the coast belt it is rather uncom- 

 mon. Specimens from the extreme northern part of the State 

 are intermediate between pubescens and Tnedianus, resembling 

 ithe former in color but approaching the latter in size. 



Avery at Greensboro, and McCormack at Leighton report 

 it a common breeder; fresh eggs were found at Leighton, 

 April 20, and at Prattville, April 2, 1894, and April 22, 1916. 



General habits. — This is the smallest of our woodpeckers, 

 and is the one usually known as "little sapsucker." It occurs 

 alike in timber tracts and orchards, or along roadsides and 

 hedgerows, though never in large numbers. Not at all shy, 

 it often lives in dooryards, orchards, or hedges around the 

 farm. It renders important service in ridding fruit and 

 forest trees of injurious insects and its presence should always 

 be encouraged around the farm and home buildings. The 

 downy is a sociable little bird, and although rarely found in 

 flocks of its own kind, it seems, especially in winter, to like 

 the company of other small insectivorous birds, such as chicka- 

 dees and nuthatches. The nests are placed in hollows dug in 

 the trunk or limb of a dead or decaying deciduous tree. 



Food habits. — Investigation of the food of the downy wood- 

 pecker has shown the bird to be wholly beneficial. Its diet 

 is made up of 76 per cent animal matter and 24 per cent vege- 

 table. Of the insect food, beetles and ants constitute the 

 largest items, each amounting to about 21 per cent; cater- 

 pillars form about '16 per cent. Other insects eaten are bugs, 

 scale insects, plant lice, and the eggs of grasshoppers, crickets, 

 katydids, and cockroaches. Fruit amounted to only about 

 6 per cent of the total food and most of it was of useless wild 

 varieties. Corn in small quantities was found in 20 stomachs.* 



RED-COCKADED WOODPECKER; "SAPSUCKER": 

 Phrenopicus boreoMs (Vieillot).f 



State records. — The red-cockaded woodpecker (fig. 7) is 

 locally common over the greater part of the State but is con- 

 fined for the most part to tracts of open pine timber. It is 



•Beal, F. E. L., Biol. Surv. Bull. 37, pp. 18-22, 1911. 



tDryobates borealU of the A. O. U. Check-list; for changre of name see Ridgway, 

 Birds of North and Midd. Amer. ; Bull. 50, U. S. Nat. Mus., part 6, p. 268. 1914. 



