244 REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSION. 



not constitute so large an element of food with this bird 'as they do with the downy. 

 Only 17 per cent were found as a total of the year's consumption, but these were 

 mostly of the genus Campanotus, which lives in the more or less decayed parts of 

 trees, from which the woodpeckers can alone dislodge them. Plant-lice and scales 

 were found in a few stomachs, and in several the latter constituted the whole 

 contents. 



One point to be especially rioted in regard to the food habits of the two birds 

 just considered ' is that the relative proportion of animal and vegetable foods in 

 their diet varies but little from month to month throughout the year. Most 

 birds that live on the same range through the whole year are found to subsist on 

 insect food during the warmer months, but in winter, when these are not easily 

 obtained, they change to a vegetable diet, such as seed, mast, etc. This, however, 

 is not the case with the two birds under discussion. While the animal food which 

 they consume does vary to some extent from month to month, there is no decided 

 increase in the warmer season or decrease in winter. This is evidently owing to 

 the fact that so large a proportion of the food consists of woodboring larvae, which 

 can be found in their burrows at all seasons, and which the birds prefer to dig 

 out rather than subsist upon other food which may be more abundant or more 

 easily obtained. It is this very marked preference for wood boring larvae, shown by 

 the amount of hard labor they are willing to undertake in order to get them, that 

 gives these birds their great value as conservators of the forest. 



The Three-toed Woodpeckers {Picoides arcticus and P. americanus). 



The two species of three-toed woodpeckers are so much alike in their food as 

 well as in their general habits that they may be considered together, as they eat 

 almost identically the same food and in the same proportions. They are both found 

 only in the northern portions of the country. They breed to some extent in the 

 northern tier of New England States, and some of those farther west, but even 

 there they are most abundant during winter. They are eminently forest-haunting 

 birds, and live in and gain their livelihood from trees. Like the hairy and downy 

 woodpeckers, their principal food consists of wood-inhabiting coleopterous and 

 lepidopterous larvae — that is, grubs and caterpillars that bore into trees and 

 fallen logs. 



An examination of a number of their stomachs shows that more than nine- 

 tenths of their food consists of animal matter, and that more than four-fifths of this 

 is made up of these destructive woodborers. The remainder is composed of ants, a 

 few engraver beetles and some scales. As with the hairy and downy woodpeckers, 



