_Food._--Various studies of the food habits of the hairy woodpeckers show that these birds are among our most useful birds and especially valuable as protectors of our forest and shade trees and orchards. More than 75 percent of their food consists of injurious insects, while the amount of useful insects and cultivated fruits that they destroy is insignificant. Prof. F. E. L. Beal (1911) has published the most exhaustive report on this subject, based on the study of 382 stomachs collected during every month in the year and from many parts of the range of the species, including practically all of the races. He says: “In the first analysis the food divides into 77.67 percent of animal matter and 22.33 of vegetable. The animal food consists of insects, with a few spiders and millepeds; the vegetable part is made up of fruit, seeds, and a number of miscellaneous substances.” Of the animal food, he says: “The largest item in the annual diet of the hairy woodpecker consists of the larvae of cerambycid and buprestid beetles, with a few lucanids and perhaps some other wood borers. These insects constitute over 31 percent of the food and are eaten in every month of the year. * * * One stomach contained 100 of these larvae and 83 and 50, respectively, were taken from two others. Of the 382 stomachs, 204, or 53 percent, contained these grubs, and 27 of them held no other food. Other beetles amount to a little more than 9 percent.” Ants rank second in importance, amounting to a little more than 17 percent, and are taken every month in the year; other Hymenoptera are eaten in very small quantities and irregularly. Caterpillars are the next most important item, many of them wood-boring species, amounting to a little less than 10 percent. “Prof. F. M. Webster states that he has seen a hairy woodpecker successfully peck a hole through the parchment-like covering of the cocoon of a Cecropia moth and devour the contents. On examining more than 20 cocoons in a grove of box elders, he found only 2 uninjured,” according to Professor Beal (1911), who adds that bugs (Hemiptera) and plant lice (aphids) form only a small part of the food, and says: “Orthoptera, that is, grasshoppers, crickets, and cockroaches, are rarely eaten by the hairy. A few eggs, probably those of tree crickets, and the egg cases (oötheca) of cockroaches, constitute the bulk of this food. These with a few miscellaneous insects amount to a little more than 2 percent for the year. Spiders with their cocoons of eggs, including one jointed spider (Solpugidae), and a few millepeds, were eaten to the extent of about 3.5 percent, which completes the quota of animal food.” He says further: