E. H. Forbush (1927) says that “Miss Caroline E. Hamilton of Greenfield, Massachusetts, observed in late September an individual that remained in a yard from daylight till dark, making the rounds of the trees and remaining longest on the fruit trees at the tiny holes attributed to Sapsuckers. She said that the bird seemed to find good food in these pits, and it may have been eating some of the cambium.” He writes further: Mr. E. O. Grant, a faithful correspondent of Patten, Maine, travels over considerable region and north into Quebec, spending much time in the woods. On March 6, 1922, he wrote that the spruce budworm had killed about thirty percent of the spruce in that region and nearly all the fir, and that among the dead trees he saw hundreds of both the three-toed species, together with nearly equal numbers of Downy Woodpeckers and Hairy Woodpeckers. Food for the birds was very plentiful, as dark-beetles and spruce-borers were numerous. When an invasion of caterpillars strips coniferous trees and thus exposes their trunks and branches to the hot summer sun, dark-beetles attack and virtually girdle them with numerous tunnels beneath the bark; borers get in and sometimes most of the trees die. The woodpeckers, concentrating on these dead trees from all the forest around about, help to keep down the undue increase of bark-beetles and borers which, if they became too numerous, might attack some live trees. _Behavior._--Lucien M. Turner says in his unpublished notes: “The manner of flight of this species is less vigorous than in _Picoides arcticus_, yet differing in a manner that is difficult to describe; the unfolding of the wings when preparing to make the upward swoop is quicker, the stroke of the wing not so strong, and the plunge not so deep.” Both species of three-toed woodpeckers are fearless birds, tame, and unsuspicious, probably because of their unfamiliarity with man and his hostile intentions; both are less active than most other woodpeckers, this species being particularly quiet in its movements and sedentary in its habits. Mr. Brewster (1898) writes: My previous impression that _Picoides americanus_ is a very much less active and restless bird than _P. arcticus_, was fully confirmed by the behavior of this male who was almost if not quite as slow and lethargic of movement as a sapsucker. He would spend minutes at a time clinging to one spot and when he moved up the tree trunks it was in a singularly slow, deliberate manner. Only when at or near the nest did he show real animation. * * *