90 WOODPECKERS IN RELATION TO TREES. 



In 90 of these they are so serious as to spoil the appearance or worka- 

 bility of the wood, and in 22 species they render the wood useless 

 except for coarse construction or for fuel. 



Except in the case of hickory, there are not at hand sufficient data 

 to determine the proportion of trees injured by sapsuckers, and hence 

 it is not possible to estimate the actual loss. To remedy this defect 

 in part, the writer has made inventories of the trees of certain areas. 

 Near the mouth of Scotts Run, Fairfax County, Va., an area was 

 marked out and found to contain 55 trees. Ten of these, or 18.1 per 

 cent of the whole number, showed sapsucker work. Of 266 trees 

 on a part of Plummers Island, Md., 36, or 13.5 per cent, have been 

 attacked by sapsuckers. In the west half of the Department of 

 Agriculture grounds at Washington are 232 trees, of which 56, or 24 

 per cent of the whole, show sapsucker work. The results of less 

 definite observations in the field are as follows : On St. Vincent 

 Island, Fla., only enough live oaks and long-leaf pines are pecked to 

 make 1 per cent of the whole number of trees, but at the Santee Club, 

 South Carolina, 90 per cent of these two species are attacked, as also 

 enough other trees to make the proportion of the whole well over 50 

 per cent. At Abbeville, La., and Gainesville, Fla., 25 to 60 per cent 

 of the trees in various forests are punctured; at Cottonport, La., 

 about 60 per cent show plentiful pecking, and at Longbridge, La., 

 fully 95 per cent of the trees are profusely drilled, there being only 

 one species, the tupelo gum, on which no pecks were seen. In con- 

 nection with these estimates it must be borne in mind that we get a 

 record only of the trees which bear considerable sapsucker work, as 

 those with only a few pecks are likely to be unnoted. 



In collections of wood specimens in museums, where few if any 

 cases of sapsucker work were overlooked, the following proportions 

 of punctured specimens were noted: One hundred and fifty-one 

 out of a total of about 500, or 30 per cent of those in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, and 71 out of about the same number, 

 or 14 per cent of the specimens in the Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica 

 Plain, Mass., which are mainly smaller pieces of the trees at the 

 American Museum. The difference in size of the samples probably 

 accounts for the discrepancy in the number bearing punctures. The 

 collection of Illinois woods in the Field Museum of Natural History, 

 Chicago, is composed of 197 pieces, of which 36, or 18 per cent, bear 

 sapsucker work. Sixteen out of 64, or 25 per cent, of other United 

 States woods in the same museum were pecked. In the writer's 

 opinion it is safe to assume that at least 10 per cent of the trees in the 

 normal range of the yellow-bellied woodpecker bear marks of its work. 

 This means that the wood of 10 per cent of the trees contains defects. 



It has been shown that much white-oak and yellow-poplar veneer 

 and many ash and hickory handles are relegated to the cull grade 

 on account of bird pecks. In hundreds of barrels inspected by the 



