Jan. 21, 19x1.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
91 
§2 
To Destroy Ground Squirrels. 
see that he gave heed, probably having be¬ 
come familiar with teams and the conversation 
of men. It looks as if he has taken up winter 
quarters, and as the snow fall is light, winter 
not setting in until the holidays and the frost 
going out of the ground about the middle of 
February, he may escape migrating. All about 
this place the mountains have put on their 
white coverings, which will remain until nearly, 
if not quite the first of June. 
This woodcock was seen just outside the 
limits of Cranbrook, and my son, H. Yorke 
Parker, who is thirty-four years of age, and has 
hunted woodcock, ruffed grouse, etc., with me 
since large enough to do so, tells me that in 
September, 1907, he saw a woodcock near the 
place I saw this one Nov. 12, 1910. He was 
within twenty feet of the bird, looked it over 
carefully, as it was in plain sight, and then 
flushed it; and the usual whistling of the bird 
as it rose was distinctly heard. He has also 
heard others say they have flushed woodcock 
in the same locality, and that they nest and 
rear young in a nearby favorable place for 
breeding. 
The only difference I noted, between the 
woodcock I saw here and our Eastern birds 
was that he was of a decidedly darker color 
and markings. We will try to shoot him, if he 
can be found, and send him to you by registered 
mail, and not being successful, my son will try 
to send you one next year. 
Clarence L. Parker. 
[The westernmost point of the woodcock’s 
range, as known to ornithologists, is in Eastern 
Colorado, where' the bird has been taken as a 
straggler. In the North it is found as far 
west as Saskatchewan, but so far as known it 
has never crossed the mountains nor even been 
found save casually on the flanks of the North¬ 
ern Rocky Mountains. 
This lends an extraordinary interest to Mr. 
Parker’s letter, telling of observing a woodcock 
for an hour in British Columbia, and giving ac¬ 
counts of other observations thought to have 
been made there at other times. 
Mr. Parker is a sportsman and a nature lover 
who, he tells us, has had nearly fifty years in 
the open, and who should know a woodcock- 
one of the most unmistakable of birds—as well 
as anyone can. Ornithologists who recognize 
possible danger of errors in observation will be 
inclined to suspend their opinion as to this record 
until a specimen of the woodcock shall be taken. 
—Editor.] 
The Pileated Woodpecker. 
Westchester, Pa., Jan. 14. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: One of the characteristic sounds that 
startles a stranger in the hardwood forests of 
Florida is the cry of the pileated woodpecker, 
or log cock, as well as the resounding blows 
made by his powerful bill, as he chisels his way 
toward the center of some dead tree, in his 
search for grubs and beetles. 
In his way he is a skillful woodsman, picking 
out with unerring instinct the trees than are in¬ 
fested, and destroying large numbers of these 
enemies of the forest. 
When the pileated woodpeckers, like many 
other birds, have ceased to be abundant in the 
grand old woods, people will wonder why the 
insect enemies have so greatly increased to the 
detriment of the trees. 
Recently while driving through the Annut- 
talaga hummock in Hernado county, I sur¬ 
prised one of these fine birds at work on a dead 
magnolia. He had torn one side of the tree open, 
for a distance of twenty feet from the ground, 
clear into the heart, and his chips, many of 
them a foot or more in length, lay thickly 
around, giving one a good impression of the 
strength and activity of this bird. 
His cry is a loud laughing note not easily 
forgotten and carries a long distance through 
these woodland solitudes. 
His near relative the ivorv-billed woodpecker, 
doubtless once abounded in these same forests, 
WORK OF THE PILEATED WOODPECKER ON A DEAD 
MAGNOLIA TREE. 
but his great size and beauty of plumage made 
him much sought after, and it looks now as 
though total extinction was to be his lot ere 
many years. In only a few secluded localities 
are the ivory-bills found in ever-diminishing 
numbers, and a nest and eggs of a pair of these 
birds is one of the rarest finds a naturalist can 
make. Thomas H. Jackson. 
Bird Poaching on Laysan Island. 
Word was recently received of the arrival of 
another Japanese vessel at Laysan Island which, 
in ignorance of the arrest of the Japanese left 
on the island and the seizure of the plumage 
they had secured, was sent to take a cargo of 
plumage and leave another set of men on the 
island. Instructions were at once cabled to the 
revenue cutter Thetis, which did the patrol work 
last January, and which was lying at Honolulu, 
ordering immediate departure for Laysan to pro¬ 
tect the birds. It is too early yet to receive in¬ 
formation of the result of this second visit of 
the cutter. 
The vast amount of damage caused by small 
rodents has often been pointed out and is gen¬ 
erally known. The domestic rat causes mil¬ 
lions on millions of destruction of property 
each year, field mice sometimes ruin crops, 
and always reduce them, while prairie dogs 
and other ground squirrels cause enormous 
losses to agriculture. One of the most de¬ 
structive of these rodent groups is that which 
includes the various ground squirrels of Cali¬ 
fornia, comparatively large animals which live 
in burrows in the ground, but are also tree 
climbers. In primitive times they fed on 
acorns, wild seeds and berries and vegeta¬ 
tion, but now they eat cultivated grain, nuts, 
fruit, vegetables and alfalfa and clover. 
These animals occur generally over the agri¬ 
cultural part of California and do an enor¬ 
mous deal of damage. They are particularly 
fond of green almonds and of the pits of green 
peaches and apricots, and in some places are 
said to take half the apple crop. They gnaw 
off the shoots of the young vines, gnaw the 
bark of orange and almond trees, and carry off 
large quantities of the drying prune. By their 
burrows they cause breaks in dikes and levees, 
and often deprive the ranchman of water at 
the time he most needs it for irrigation. The 
chief damage that they cause is to the grain 
fields, where they devour the newly sown bar¬ 
ley, wheat and oats, dig up and carry off the 
sprouting kernels, cut down the grain when it 
is in the milk, and after it has ripened and is 
cut, eat all that they can, and carry great 
quantities away in their cheek pouches to 
their underground burrows. 
As if all this were not enough, the Asiatic 
plague is epidemic among squirrels immedi¬ 
ately east and south of San Francisco Bay, 
no doubt contracted by contact with the rats 
at seaport towns about the bay. A number of 
fatal human cases have been reported. 
A circular on the California ground squirrel 
by Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Consulting Biologist, 
has just been issued by the Bureau of Biolog¬ 
ical Survey, of which H. W. Henshaw is 
Chief. A considerable portion of this circular 
is devoted to the consideration of the means 
by which these animals may be destroyed. 
One of these means is the encouragement of 
the squirrel’s natural enemies, such as coy¬ 
otes, badgers, foxes, bob-cats and the golden 
eagle; another is trapping; but the most ef¬ 
fective means is poisoning. This poisoning 
is best done with strychnine applied to barley, 
which is more attractive to squirrels and less 
likely to be eaten by birds than any other 
bait, and the best way of administering it is 
by coating the grain with a poison solution. 
This method, except during the rainy season, 
kills the animals more quickly than grain that 
has been soaked, and being killed quickly, the 
creatures die above ground and are likely to 
be seen. 
The success of the poison-coated grain is 
largely due to the squirrel’s habit of gathering 
seeds and carrying them home in its cheek 
pouches. These cheek pouches are muscular 
sacks lying one on each side of the jaw and 
throat, and each large enough to hold about 
two hundred kernels of barley. In these 
pouches they collect food to be carried to 
