Food: The food of this species is similar to that of the northern three-toed woodpecker. Beal (1911) found 75 percent of the food to be woodboring beetle larvae, mainly long-horned beetles and metallic woodboring beetles. Weevils and other beetles, spiders, and ants are eaten along with some wild fruit, mast, and cambium. Beal estimated that each three-toed woodpecker annually consumed 13,675 woodboring beetle larvae. Northern three-toed woodpecker _Picoides tridactylus_ L 7½″ [Illustration] Habitat: This highly beneficial woodpecker is most common in coniferous forests of the West, but does occur occasionally in the Northeast. Nest: The northern three-toed woodpecker excavates nest cavities each year in standing dead trees or in dead limbs of live trees with rotted heartwood (Jackman and Scott 1975). Their nest cavities have been reported in pine, aspen, spruce, and cedar trees (Bent 1939). In Arizona, we found two nests in ponderosa pine snags. Food: The northern three-toed woodpecker is probably one of the most important birds in combating forest insect pests in the western United States. Massey and Wygant (1973) found that spruce beetles comprised 65 percent of their diet in Colorado. During the winter when other foods were scarce, the spruce beetle made up 99 percent of the food taken. West and Speiers (1959) reported that both species of three-toed woodpeckers in northeastern United States feed on elm bark beetles, which carry Dutch elm disease. Koplin (1972) estimated that 20 percent of an endemic and 84 percent of an epidemic spruce beetle population in Colorado were consumed by three species of woodpeckers, the most important of which was the northern three-toed. Other foods include ants, woodboring and lepidopteran larvae, fruits, mast, and cambium (Beal 1911, Massey and Wygant 1973). Ivory-billed woodpecker _Campephilus principalis_ L 18″ [Illustration] Habitat: Cooke (1888) and Bent (1939) described the largest of the North American woodpeckers as rare, shy, and found only in the heaviest timber in virgin cypress and bottomland forest of the South. Tanner (1942) described ivory-billed woodpecker habitat as heavily forested and usually flooded alluvial land bordering rivers, made up of oaks, cypress, and green ash. The most recent sightings (between 5 and 10 pairs) have been made in bottomland hardwoods that have been cut over but still have some large, mature trees (Dennis 1967). They are included on the national “Endangered species” list. Nest: Nest cavities of this species have been recorded in almost every species of tree occurring within the ivory-bill’s habitat (Greenway 1958). The squarish holes (Dennis 1967) are high, 16 to 65 feet, and in the trunks of living or dead trees (Greenway 1958, Forbush and May 1939).