Nearly a fourth of the birds’ total food is composed of ants. These insects are generally annoying and often very injurious, especially on account of their damage to stored products and because of their habit of fostering destructive plant lice. More than a fifth of the nighthawk’s food consists of June bugs, dung beetles, and other beetles of the leaf-chafer family. These are the adults of white grubs, noted pests, and even as adults many members of the family are decidedly harmful.
Numerous other injurious beetles, as click beetles, wood borers, and weevils, are relished. True bugs, moths, flies, grasshoppers, and crickets also are Important elements of the food. Several species of mosquitoes, including the transmitter of malaria, are eaten. Other well-known pests consumed by the nighthawk are Colorado potato beetles, cucumber beetles, rice, clover-leaf, and cotton-boll weevils, bill bugs, bark beetles, squash bugs, and moths of the cotton worm.
Nighthawks are much less numerous than formerly, chiefly because of wanton shooting. They are given full legal protection almost everywhere, and citizens should see that the law is obeyed. The bird is far too useful and attractive to be persecuted.
[THE WOODPECKERS.]
Fig. 20.—Hairy woodpecker. Length, about 9 inches.
Five or six species of woodpeckers are familiarly known throughout eastern United States, and in the West are replaced by others of similar habits. Several species remain in the Northern States through the entire year, while others are more or less migratory.