NOTES ON THE FOOD OF BIRDS 
47 
Lewis’s Woodpecker 
“In summer its food consists mainly of insects of differ¬ 
ent kinds, such as grasshoppers, large black crickets, ants, 
beetles, flies, larvae of different kinds, as well as of berries, 
like wild strawberries and raspberries, service berries and 
salmon berries, acorns, pine seeds and juniper berries, 
while in cultivated districts cherries and other small fruits 
enter into its daily bill of fare. Here, when common, it may 
occasionally do some little damage in the orchards, but this 
is fully compensated by the noxious insects it destroys at the 
same time. In localities where grasshoppers are abundant 
they live on these pests almost exclusively while they last. 
Capt. Bend ire. 
Gila Woodpecker 
This bird occurs in southwestern New Mexico, but is 
properly a species of southern Arizona and adjacent Mexico. 
The specimens originally described by Baird in 1854 were 
from “Bill Williams' River, N. M.,” but Bendire informs us 
that this is in Arizona. Its food is said to consist of various 
insects, and largely of cactus fruits and mistletoe berries. 
It is probably this species and the gilded flicker which, 
nesting in the giant cactus and feeding on the fruit of that 
plant, have come to transfer their attentions to the oranges 
in Salt River Valley, piercing them with their beaks and 
eating their contents. 
Red=Shafted Flicker 
This well known woodpecker is common in New Mexico, 
and is a great devourer of ants. One shot by Mr. E. Atkins 
at Conocita, above Cleveland, N. M., had the stomach full of 
ants, of two or more species. One shot on the Rio de las Ca¬ 
sas had also eaten ants, not only the adults, but innumerable 
pupae. 
MISCELLANEOUS BIRDS 
Sparrow Hawk 
The American sparrow hawk (Falco sparverius) is common 
in New Mexico; Capt. Pope observed it at Doha Ana as long 
