Although the eagle has the emblematic¹ place of honor in the United States, the downy woodpecker is distinguished² as the most useful bird citizen. Of the eight hundred and three kinds of birds in North America, his services are most helpful to man. He destroys destructive forest insects. Long ago Nature selected the woodpecker to be the chief caretaker—the physician and surgeon—of the tree world. This is a stupendous task. Forests are extensive and are formed of hundreds of species of trees. The American woodpeckers have the supervision³ of uncounted acres that are forested with more than six hundred kinds of trees.

With the exception of the California big tree, each tree species is preyed⁵ upon by scores, and many species by hundreds, of injurious and deadly insects. Five hundred kinds of insects[Pg 194] are known to prey⁴ upon the oak, and a complete count may show a thousand kinds. Many of these insects multiply with amazing rapidity, and at all times countless⁶ numbers of these aggressive pests form warrior⁷ armies with which the woodpecker must constantly contend.

In this incessant⁸ struggle with insects the woodpecker has helpful assistance from many other bird families. Though the woodpecker gives general attention to hundreds of kinds of insects, he specializes on those which injure the tree internally,—which require a surgical⁹ operation to obtain. He is a distinguished specialist; the instruments for tree-surgery are intrusted to his keeping, and with these he each year performs innumerable successful surgical operations upon our friends the trees.

Woodpeckers are as widely distributed as forests,—just how many to the square mile no one knows. Some localities are blessed with a goodly number, made up of representatives from three or four of our twenty-four woodpecker species. Forest, shade, and

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