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.

[Illustration: WOODPECKER.]

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."