166 
BIRDS OF PENNSYLVANIA 
quest of food visit the trees in orchards and yards, their visits to these 
places are much less frequent than those of the little Downy. 
Both the Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers are called “ Sap suckers” 
by those who are unacquainted with birds, from the common belief that 
both subsist largely on the sap of apple and other fruit trees. This 
popular, yet mistaken idea, has induced many farmers and fruit-growers 
to destroy these two species, as well as other woodpeckers, when found 
about their orchards. 
Wilson refers to this bird as “ a haunter of orchards and lover of apple 
trees, an eager hunter of insects, their eggs and larvae in old stumps 
and old rails, in rotten branches and crevices of the bark." “The food 
of this species consists principally of the eggs and larvae of injurious 
insects that are burrowing in the wood of our fruit and forest trees; 
these he is enabled to obtain by chiseling out a small hole with his 
powerful bill, and drawing them from their lurking places with his long 
barbed tongue. He also eats some small fruits and berries, but never, 
so far as I am aware, the buds or blossoms of trees, as some persons 
assert.”— E. A. Samuels. 
The food materials of nine of these woodpeckers examined by me are 
mentioned below: 
No. 
Date. 
Locality. 
Food-Materials. 
1 
Nov. —, 18T9. 
Chester county, Pa. 
Seeds of berries. 
2 
April 11. 1880. 
Newark, Delaware. 
Larvae and beetles. 
3 
.Tune 13. 1880. 
Chester county, Pa. 
Spiders and dipterous insects. 
4 
Dec. 20, 1880. 
Chester county, Pa. 
Small seeds and particles of Indian corn. 
5 
Jan. 28, 1881. 
Chester county, Pa. 
Beetles. 
6 
Mar. 10. 1881. 
Chester county. Pa. 
Numerous insects. 
7 
Sept. 13. 1881. 
Chester county Pa. 
Black ants and larvse. 
8 
May 18, 1883. 
Chester county, Pa... 
Black ants, diptera and beetles 
9 
Mar. 26. 1884. 
Chester county, Pa. 
Beetles and larvse. 
Dryobates pubescens (Linn ). 
Downy Woodpecker; Sapsucker. 
Description (Plate 76 ). 
Length about 6J, inches ; extent about 14 ; outer tail feathers barred with black 
and white, otherwise same in color as D. villosus. 
Habitat .—Northern and eastern North America, from British Columbia and the 
eastern edge of the plains northward and eastward. 
This indefatigable little insect hunter, the smallest of all our wood¬ 
peckers, is a common resident in Pennsylvania. The timid disposition 
so frequently noticed in the preceding species is rarely, if ever, shown 
by the Downy AVoodpeckers, which, at all seasons, are found frequent¬ 
ing our shade and fruit trees, and not unfrequently these little feathered 
carpenters may be observed excavating nesting places in trees close to 
the habitations of man. Downy AToodpeckers subsist chiefly on various 
forms of insects, and when this food becomes scarce they feed often¬ 
times on the seeds of grasses and some few other plants; also, small 
