A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS 
647 
Two of the best-known Woodpeckers, the Hairy Wood- 
pecker ( Dryobates villosus ) and the Downy Woodpecker 
( D • pubescens ) , including their races, range over the greater 
part of the United States, and for the most part remain through- 
out the year in their usual haunts. They differ chiefly in size, 
for their colors are practically the same, and the males, like 
other Woodpeckers, are distinguished by a scarlet patch on the 
head. 
An examination of many stomachs of these two birds 
shows that from two-thirds to three-fourths of the food con- 
sists of insects, chiefly noxious. Wood-boring beetles, both 
adults and larvae, are conspicuous, and with them are associated 
many caterpillars, mostly species that burrow into trees. Next 
in importance are the ants that live in decaying wood, all of 
which are sought by W oodpeckers and eaten in great quantities. 
Many ants are particularly harmful to timber, for if they find 
a small spot of decay in the vacant burrow of some woodborer, 
they enlarge the hole, and, as their colony is always on the in- 
crease, continue to eat away the wood until the whole trunk is 
honeycombed. Moreover, these insects are not accessible to 
other birds, and could pursue their career of destruction un- 
molested were it not that the Woodpeckers, with beaks and 
tongues especially fitted for such work, dig out and devour 
them. It is thus evident that Woodpeckers are great conser- 
vators of forests. To them, more than to any other agency, 
we owe the preservation of timber from hordes of destructive 
insects. 
“ One of the larger Woodpeckers familiar to everyone is the 
Flicker, or Golden-winged Woodpecker ( Colaptes auratus ), 
which is generally distributed throughout the United States 
from the Atlantic coast to — 
• 
“ It has been customary to speak of the smaller Wood- 
peckers as “ Sap-suckers,” under the belief that they drill holes 
in the bark of trees for the purpose of drinking the sap and 
eating the inner bark. Close observation, however, has fixed 
this habit upon only one species, the Yellow-bellied Wood- 
pecker, or Sapsucker ( Sphyrapicus varius). This bird has 
been shown to be guilty of pecking holes in the bark of various 
forest trees, and sometimes in that of apple trees, from which 
it drinks the sap when the pits become filled. It has been 
