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RED-BELLIED WOODPECKER 



birds, and capable of subsisting on coarser and more various fare, 

 and of sustaining a greater degree of cold, than several other of 

 our Woodpeckers. They are active and vigorous; and being al- 

 most continually in search of insects that injure our forest trees, do 

 not seem to deserve the injurious epithets that almost all writers 

 have given them. It is true they frequently perforate the timber 

 in pursuit of these vermin, but this is almost always in dead and 

 decaying parts of the tree, which are the nests and nurseries of 

 millions of destructive insects. Considering matters in this light 

 I do not think their services overpaid by all the ears of Indian corn 

 they consume; and would protect them within my own premises 

 as being more useful than injurious. 



