COMMON BIRDS OF SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES. 
31 
every month, except October. The cotton leaf worm was identified in several 
stomachs and the cotton bollworm in one. The latter is a well-known pest in cotton 
fields and also feeds upon a number of other cultivated plants, including sweet corn, 
from which it is known also as the corn worm. It preys also upon tomatoes and 
occasionally upon beans and peas. A few dragonflies, together with miscellaneous 
insects and spiders, com¬ 
plete the animal food (4.92 
percent). 
The vegetable food of the 
scissor-tail consists of small 
fruit, or berries, and a few 
seeds. The total percent¬ 
age ,3.88, indicates that this 
is not the favorite, but is 
taken for variety. 
The food of the scissor- 
tailed flycatcher requires 
but little study to show 
that where the bird is 
abundant, it is of much 
economic value. The bird 
selects a diet almost en¬ 
tirely of insects, but in this 
the useful species are so few 
that they may be disre¬ 
garded. Its consumption 
of grasshoppers alone is suf¬ 
ficient to entitle the scissor- 
tail to complete protec¬ 
tion.— F. E. L. B. 
RED-COCKADED 
WOODPECKER . 1 
The red-cockaded wood¬ 
pecker (fig. 16) is an in¬ 
habitant of the Southeast¬ 
ern States from eastern 
Texas north to southern 
Virginia and southern Mis¬ 
souri. Pine woods are its 
favorite haunt, and a large 
percentage of its food is 
obtained from pine trees. 
No complaints have yet 
been heard that this bird 
harms crops or forest trees, nor does analysis of its food indicate that such is the case. 
So far as shown, it does not frequent orchards or cultivated land. 
Ninety-nine stomachs from Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and 
Texas, representing every month, but not many in each, were examined* Of the 
total food, 86.08 per cent was composed of insects, and the remainder, 13.92 per cent, 
of vegetable matter, mostly seeds of conifers. 
Useful beetles were found in nine stomachs, and amount to about 2 per cent of 
the whole food. Other beetles, chiefly the larvae of wood-boring species, aggregate 
B2I5G-4S 
Fig. 16.—Red-cockaded woodpecker. Length, about 8} inches. 
1 Dry abates borealis 
