The vegetable food of woodpeckers is varied, but consists largely of small fruits and berries. The downy and hairy woodpeckers eat such fruits as dogwood and Virginia creeper and seeds of poison ivy, sumac, and a few other shrubs. The flicker also eats a great many small fruits and the seeds of a considerable number of shrubs and weeds. None of the three species is much given to eating cultivated fruits or crops. The red-head has been accused of eating the larger kinds of fruit, as apples, and also of taking considerable corn. Stomach examinations show that to some extent these charges are substantiated, but that the habit is not prevalent enough to cause much damage. The bird is fond of mast, especially beechnuts, and when these nuts are plentiful it remains north all winter. Woodpeckers apparently are the only agents which can successfully cope with certain insect enemies of the forest, and, to some extent, with those of fruit trees also. For this reason, if for no other, they should be protected in every possible way. THE CUCKOOS. Two species of cuckoos are common in the United States east of the Great Plains, the yellow-billed cuckoo[60] (fig. 23) and the black-billed cuckoo,[61] and in the West a relative of the yellow-bill, the California cuckoo,[62] ranges from Colorado and Texas to the Pacific coast. While the two species are quite distinct, the food habits of the yellow-bill and the black-bill do not greatly differ and their economic status is practically the same. [60] _Coccyzus americanus._ [61] _Coccyzus erythropthalmus._ [62] _Coccyzus americanus occidentalis._ [Illustration: Fig. 23.—Yellow-billed cuckoo. Length, about 12 inches.] Examination of 155 stomachs has shown that these species are much given to eating caterpillars, and, unlike most birds, do not reject those covered with hair. In fact, cuckoos eat so many hairy caterpillars that the hairs pierce the inner lining of the stomach and remain there, so that when the stomach is opened it appears to be lined with a thin coating of fur. An examination of the stomachs of 46 black-billed cuckoos, taken during the summer months, showed the remains of 906 caterpillars, 44 beetles, 96 grasshoppers, 100 sawflies, 30 stinkbugs, and 15 spiders. In all probability more individuals than these were represented, but their remains were too badly broken for recognition. Most of the caterpillars were hairy, and many of them belong to a genus that lives in colonies and feeds on the leaves of trees, including the apple tree. One stomach was filled with larvæ of a caterpillar belonging to the same genus as the tent caterpillar, and possibly to that species. Other larvæ were those of large moths, for which the bird seems to have a special fondness. The beetles were for the most part click beetles and weevils, including a few May beetles. The sawflies were contained in two stomachs, one of which held no less than 60 in the larval stage.