242 REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 



The Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens). 



This little woodpecker is the smallest of all those inhabiting the United States. 

 It is also one of the most familiar, being a frequent visitor to the shade trees 

 about houses and parks, while its fondness for orchards is well known. It is, how- 

 ever, no stranger to the forest, where it often nests, and in the winter season 

 may be frequently met in a mixed company of chickadees, creepers, nuthatches and 

 kinglets, with whom it seems to be on the most amicable terms. It is moreover 

 so quiet and unobtrusive in its movements that the first notice one has of its 

 presence is perhaps a gentle tapping or scratching on the limb of a tree within 

 one or two yards of one's head, where our diminutive friend has discovered a 

 decayed spot inhabited by woodboring larvae or ants. 



About 300 stomachs of this bird have been examined by the United States 

 Department of Agriculture and found to contain about 75 per cent of animal food 

 to 25 of vegetable. The animal matter practically consisted entirely of insects and 

 their allies, and was made up of beetles, both adult and larval, ants, bugs, flies, 

 caterpillars and grasshoppers, with a few spiders and myriapods. The relative 

 proportions of these elements, however, differ widely. Beetles and their larvae 

 constitute nearly one-third of the animal food — 24 per cent — and the greater part of 

 these were woodboring species or those which are acknowledged to be the worst 

 enemies to forest trees. Cerambycid and Buprestid larvae, as well as the engraver 

 beetles (Scolytidae), are such constant elements of the food that they were found in 

 almost every stomach, and in some were the only contents. If to these we add the 

 caterpillars (16 per cent of the whole food), all of which were tree feeders, and 

 most of them borers, we have the total of 40 per cent, or over half of the animal 

 food, made up of these enemies of the forest. The American tent caterpillar (Mal- 

 cosoma aniericana) , a notorious pest to both orchard and forest trees, was found in 

 many of the stomachs. Some other beetles besides the woodborers are also eaten 

 by the downy woodpecker. Over 50 specimens of Dorytomus mucidits, one of the 

 snout beetles or weevils, and a species which subsists on trees, were taken from 

 one stomach. 



Ants enter the diet of the downy to nearly the same extent as beetles, viz, 23 

 per cent of the entire food. These are largely species of the genus Camponotus, 

 which inhabit the interior of the more or less solid wood, and constantly enlarge 

 their quarters by extending their galleries in all directions. Other of the species 

 upon which they feed are those that protect and care for the plant-lice, with many 

 that get their living in various ways. 



Bugs (Hemiptera) are represented in the downy 's diet by several families, but 



