Excerpt from Woodpeckers in Relation to Trees and Wood Products Woodpeckers are peculiarly dependent upon trees, which furnish them food, shelter, and cradles for their young. No birds are more highly specialized nor more perfectly adapted to a particular mode of life than are most woodpeckers to arboreal existence. Moreover, as trees are important to woodpeckers, so are these birds important to trees. Woodpeckers benefit trees by consuming many of the most destructive forest pests, insects largely inaccessible to other birds. In securing these insects, however, which constitute the bulk of their food, and in making nests and shelter cavities, woodpeckers have another significant economic relation to trees, for they remove bark and wood from both dead and living trees. In the case of dead trees little or no harm is done. When, however, they make excavations in living trees, the birds destroy more or less of the cambium layer, from which proceeds the growth of both wood and bark. Slight injuries to the cambium result in distorted growth, but the destruction of large areas may cause death. Since trees are exceedingly valuable to man, the habits Of birds whose relations to trees are so vital are Of much economlc Importance. It is the purpose of this bulletin to examine the evidence for and against woodpeckers and to determine their status according to the effect Of their habits upon trees and wood products. Injuries by woodpeckers are treated under two heads: (1) Damage by wood peckers in general; (2) injuries due almost exclusively to the three species properly known as sapsuckers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.