It is as an orchardist that the Willow Woodpecker deserves the most careful consideration. Bird-lovers are, perhaps prone to superlatives in commending their friends, but it is safe to say that a more useful bird _for his ounces_ than the downy woodpecker does not exist. He eats not only ants and the larvae of wood-boring beetles, but scale insects, plant lice, and the pupae of the detestable coddling moth. The evidence is clear that these incomparable tree experts, together with their friends, the nuthatches, the chickadees, and the creepers, would insure the health of our orchards if they were numerous enough. It becomes of the highest importance, then, to study their welfare in turn. In the northern and more elevated valleys of the State, it may be worth while to offer them nuts or to hang out a bit of suet in winter. In the South no such precautions are necessary. A fundamental consideration, however, is the provision of suitable nesting sites. Experiment has shown that the downy’s forage range during the breeding season is not extensive. The clamoring young are fed by the product of nearby trees (fed, it may be, a thousand insects a day). Their services, therefore, must be secured in the orchard; and to this end the orchardist must consent to leave certain dead branches--a foot or so at the base of the larger ones will do--for a nesting site. Dead wood, of course, invites insects; but the most serious and frequent mistake which our California orchardists make is to trim out all the dead wood from the fruit trees. A pair of Willow Woodpeckers, or of Slender-billed Nuthatches, will clean out all the dangerous pests from a dead tree, and sixteen live ones to boot. Grinnell and Storer (1924) made some studies of the feeding habits of the willow woodpecker in the Yosemite region, of which they say: A pair of Willow Woodpeckers proved to be regular tenants of Curry’s apple orchard on the floor of the Yosemite Valley. They, or their ancestors, had evidently worked there for some years, with the result that most of the 150 trees in the orchard showed marks of their attention, and many of the trunks were fairly riddled with drillings somewhat like those of the sapsucker. * * *