The Cuckoos are among the few birds that habitually feed upon hairy caterpillars, such as the various "tent-making" species. They also destroy large numbers of other caterpillars, and do not object to beetles and other insects which they find among the foliage of trees. Although shy birds they are frequently seen in cities, where they do their share in protecting the shade trees from the ravages of insect defoliators.
Taking the Woodpeckers as a family, there are few persons but who will readily admit that these birds comprise a very useful group. Feeding, in fact, as most of them do, upon the larvæ of wood-boring insects, they can readily do much greater good for the actual number of insects destroyed than if they destroyed only those that feed upon the foliage of trees. Not unfrequently will a single borer kill an entire tree if left to itself, while hundreds of foliage-feeding caterpillars of the same size have but little effect upon the appearance, to say nothing of the health, of the same tree.
Mr. M. L. Beal, assistant in the Division of Ornithology and Mammalogy of the United States Department of Agriculture, in summing up the results obtained from the examination of six hundred and seventy-nine stomachs of these birds, writes as follows:
"In reviewing the results of these investigations and comparing one species with another, without losing sight of the fact that comparative good is not necessarily positive good, it appears that of seven species considered the Downy Woodpecker is the most beneficial." He then goes on to give the food habits based on contents of the stomachs of our most common species. "Judged by the stomach examinations of the Downy and Hairy Woodpecker and Flicker it would be hard to find three other species of our common birds with fewer harmful qualities."
The Flicker is one of our most common woodpeckers in Nebraska and does much towards keeping down a number of different kinds of insects. It is very fond of ants as a diet, in fact is partial to them, and this element forms almost half of its entire food-supply during the year. It also occasionally feeds upon the chinch-bug, as can be attested by the fact that the stomach of a specimen killed near Lincoln contained in the vicinity of one thousand of these bugs. It is also a fruit-eater to the extent of about one-quarter of its entire bill of fare, but nature, not man, furnishes the supply. It takes the wild kinds in preference to those that are cultivated.