32 
FARMERS ’ BULLETIN 755 . 
15.65 per cent of the annual diet. Of these a number were weevils, or snout beetles. 
Ants, evidently the favorite food, were eaten to a great extent in every month. 
December is apparently the month of least consumption (28.93 per cent), and July 
of maximum (69.6 per cent), but the data are hardly sufficient to give final figures. 
The average consumption for the year (51.72 per cent) is exceeded by few other 
birds. 
True bugs, many of which are scales, or bark lice, are eaten to the extent of 6.99 
per cent of the food. The others are mostly pentatomids, or soldier bugs. Nearly 
all were taken in the five months from December to April, and two-thirds of them 
in December and January. These insects, and especially the pentatomids, are 
lovers of warm weather and sunshine and many live on fruit. It seems probable 
that this bird gets them from their hibernating places. Grasshoppers, crickets, 
caterpillars, white ants, spiders, and egg cases of cockroaches, make up the rest of 
the animal food. 
The greater part of the vegetable food, about a tenth of the total, consists of mast, 
mostly seeds of conifers. This was found in 45 of the 99 stomachs, and appears to 
Fig. 17.—Chuck-wilPs-widow. Length, about 12 inches. 
B2 I 57-47 
be a somewhat regular article of diet, especially in the colder months. Fruit pulp, 
poison-ivy seeds, bayberry and other seeds, cambium, and rubbish each occurred 
in a few stomachs, and together amount to about 4 per cent of the food. Corn was 
found in four stomachs, and unidentified fruit pulp in eight. The cambium was con¬ 
tained in four stomachs, and the seeds of poison ivy in one. 
From the foregoing it is evident that the red-cockaded woodpecker does little 
if any damage to products of husbandry and that it does good work in the forest 
by devouring wood-boring larvoe. No doubt it aids in distributing the seeds of the 
pines upon which it feeds, but its food has little other economic interest. —f. e. l. b. 
CHUCK-WILL’S-WIDOW . 1 
The chuck-will’s-widow (fig. 17), an interesting nocturnal bird, breeds throughout 
the area to which this bulletin is devoted. Like other species of its family, it lays 
1 A ntrostomus carolinensis. 
