File:Annual report (1901) (14563536249).jpg

Identifier: annualreport891901021newy (find matches)
Title: Annual report
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: New York (State). Forest, Fish and Game Commission
Subjects: Forests and forestry Fisheries Game and game-birds
Publisher: (Albany, N.Y. : The Commission)
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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s are so much alike in their food aswell as in their general habits that they may be considered together, as they eatalmost identically the same food and in the same proportions. They are both foundonly in the northern portions of the country. They breed to some extent in thenorthern tier of New England States, and some of those farther west, but eventhere they are most abundant during winter. They are eminently forest-hauntingbirds, and live in and gain their livelihood from trees. Like the hairy and downywoodpeckers, their principal food consists of wood-inhabiting coleopterous andlepidopterous larvae — that is, grubs and caterpillars that bore into trees andfallen logs. An examination of a number of their stomachs shows that more than nine-tenths of their food consists of animal matter, and that more than four-fifths of thisis made up of these destructive woodborers. The remainder is composed of ants, afew engraver beetles and some scales. As with the hairy and downy woodpeckers,
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JPoittsUpafffr QQeffe. WHITE-BACKED THREE-TOED WOODPECKER,Upper Figure Female, Lower Figure Male BIRDS AS CONSERVATORS OF THE FOREST. 245 their diet varies but little with the season. In the dead of winter, when allinsect life is apparently at a standstill, these birds still demand and obtain theirdaily fill of their favorite meat. Flies and bees no longer sport in the sunshine,butterflies and flowers are replaced by sleet and snow, the beetles are either deador snugly ensconced in some crevice in the bark, awaiting the return of warmth,while the larvae repose in their burrows of solid wood, apparently safe from alldisturbance. But undaunted by any degree of cold and undeterred by any amountof labor our intrepid little friends tear open the secure retreats in the bark, orchisel into the more solid wood, and drag forth the luckless insects to certaindestruction. In the Report on Forest Insects by the United States Entomological Commis-sion, some twenty-five species of Cerambycid and Bu

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