RED-HEADED WOODPECKER. 
149 
examination, to preponderate against tlieir vices, let us avail 
ourselves of the former, while we guard as well as we can 
against the latter. 
Though this bird occasionally regales himself on fruit, yet 
his natural and most useful food is insects, particularly those 
numerous and destructive species that penetrate the bark and 
body of the tree to deposit their eggs and larvae, the latter of 
which are well known to make immense havoc. That insects 
are his natural food is evident from the construction of his 
wedge-formed bill, the length, elasticity, and figure of his 
tongue, and the strength and position of his claws ; as well as 
from his usual habits. In fact, insects form at least two- 
thirds of his subsistence ; and his stomach is scarcely ever found 
without them. He searches for them with a dexterity and 
intelligence, I may safely say, more than human ; he perceives, 
by the exterior appearance of the bark, where they lurk below ; 
when he is dubious, he rattles vehemently on the outside with 
his bill, and his acute ear distinguishes the terrified vermin 
shrinking within to their inmost retreats, where his pointed 
and barbed tongue soon reaches them. The masses of bugs, 
caterpillars, and other larvae, which I have taken from the 
stomachs of these birds, have often surprised me. These 
larvae, it should be remembered, feed not only on the buds, 
leaves, and blossoms, but on the very vegetable life of the 
tree, — the alburnum, or newly forming bark and wood; the 
consequence is, that the whole branches and whole trees decay 
under the silent ravages of these destructive vermin ; witness 
the late destruction of many hundred acres of pine trees, in 
the northeastern parts of South Carolina ; * and the thousands 
of peach trees that yearly decay from the same cause. Will 
any one say, that taking half a dozen, or half a hundred, 
apples from a tree, is equally ruinous with cutting it down ? 
* In one place, on a tract of two thousand acres, of pine land, on the Sampit 
River, near Georgetown, at least ninety trees in every hundred were destroyed 
by this pernicious insect, — a small, black winged bug, resembling the weevil, 
but somewhat larger. 
