THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER is a serious fruit-eater, and many complaints have been lodged against him.  Exactly one-half his food supply consists of vegetable matter, chiefly wild berries, acorns, beechnuts, and the seeds of wild shrubs and weeds.  We may infer that about one-tenth of his food, in summer and fall, consists of cultivated fruit and berries.  His proportion of cultivated foods is entirely too small to justify any one in destroying this species.

In view of the prevalence of insect pests in the state of New York, I have spent hours in trying to devise a practical plan for making woodpeckers about ten times more numerous than they now are.  Contributions to this problem will be thankfully received.  Yes; we do put out pork fat and suet in winter, quantities of it; but I grieve to say that to-day in the Zoological Park there is not more than one woodpecker for every ten that were there twelve years ago.  Where have they gone?  Only one answer is possible.  They have been shot and eaten, by the guerrillas of destruction.

[Illustration:  GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER A Bird of Great Value to Orchards and Forests, now Rapidly Disappearing, Undoubtedly Through Slaughter as “Food”]

Surely no man of intelligence needs to be told to protect woodpeckers to the utmost, and to feed them in winter.  Nail up fat pork, or large chunks of suet, on the south sides of conspicuous trees, and encourage the woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees and titmice to remain in your woods through the long and dreary winter.

THE ENGLISH SPARROW is a nuisance and a pest, because it drives away from the house and the orchard the house wren, bluebird, phoebe, purple martin and swallow, any one of which is more valuable to man than a thousand English sparrows.  I never yet have seen one of the pest sparrows catch an insect, but Chief Forester Merkel says that he has seen one catching and eating small moths.

There is one place in the country where English sparrows have not yet come; and whenever they do appear there, they will meet a hostile reception.  I shall kill every one that comes,—­for the sake of retaining the wrens, catbirds, phoebes and thrushes that now literally make home happy for my family.  A good way to discourage sparrows is to shoot them en masse when they are feeding on road refuse, such as the white-throated, white-crowned and other sparrows never touch.  Persistent destruction of their nests will check the nuisance.

THE SHORE BIRDS.—­Who is there who thinks of the shore-birds as being directly beneficial to man by reason of their food habits?  I warrant not more than one man in every ten thousand!  We think of them only as possible “food.”  The amount of actual cash value benefit that the shore-birds confer upon man through the destruction of bad things is, in comparison with the number of birds, enormous.