tensive group of highly useful, as well as beautiful, birds. They spend most of their time during the summer months when not actually occupied with nest building and rearing their young, in hunting for and destroying different kinds of insects. But this is not all the good they do. In fall, winter, and early spring, when Mother Earth has lost her beautiful green dress and is clothed instead in somber browns and wrapped in a mantle of snow and ice, the longspurs, snowbuntings, snowbirds and some of the sparrows that have remained with us, are busily engaged in gathering for themselves a living. They hop and fly about from place to place hunting for and picking up little seeds of grasses, weeds, shrubs, and trees with which to feed themselves and keep alive until the warm weather of spring returns and brings back to them the abundant supply of nourishing insects of which they are so fond. Even during this busy cold season, they chirrup merrily as they work, so satisfied are they with the kind of life they are living. The English, or European House-sparrow, has the worst reputation of the entire family. But even this bird has some good traits which tend to secure for it our friendship. The swallows, as we all know, are insect destroyers; and, seizing their prey as they fly, they naturally take such forms among these pests as flies, gnats, and mosquitoes our worst personal enemies. We should by all means encourage these birds to build their nests in our barns and sheds in order that they may pay rent by destroying the various flies that attack and worry ourselves and our domestic animals. The shrikes or butcher-birds are genuine brigands or pirates when it comes to killing other forms of life. They are true to their name, and butcher large numbers of insects, mice, lizards, small snakes, and even occasionally a few of the smaller birds. They take their prey to some thorn bush or barbwire fence and impale the victims for future use or to dry up and blow away. The good they do will more than outweigh the harm which they inflict. The vireos or greenlets, as they are commonly called, which frequent thickets and hedgerows, live almost entirely upon an insect diet. Their food is composed chiefly of little caterpillars and grubs picked from the leaves of small trees and shrubs which form the shelter in which they make their homes. They are not entirely averse to eating some of the hairy forms, and in this respect aid the cuckoos mentioned in a preceding paragraph. The warblers are insect destroyers. Brightly-colored, active creatures as they are, they fill a gap in nature which would be empty without them. They flit about the terminal twigs and leaves of our trees and shrubs where they detect and capture many of our smaller, but at the same time very dangerous, insect pests. Plant-lice and the smaller caterpillars are at times quite prominent in their bill of fare. Much could be written about birds like the wrens, the Mockingbird, and the Catbird, but they are too well known in one way or another to make it necessary to spend time or space here for the purpose of introducing them anew. Suffice it to say, that they more than pay for what they eat by killing off some of the decidedly harmful insects. Then, too, they are to be numbered among the most beautiful singers of the feathered choir, which latter fact in itself fully offsets the harm done by them in the way of fruit eating. The nuthatches, titmice, and others of our winter and early spring birds are too well known as friends to make it necessary here to even hint at their usefulness. The eggs of many hibernating insects are quite prominent among the things eaten by them throughout the season when the trees are bare and bird food is scarce. The Robin and the Bluebird need no introduction even to our boys and girls. We all know them only to wish that their numbers could be greatly increased. The former as it hops over the grass-covered lawn in search of cut-worms, is engaged in its chief occupation. Seventeen quarts of caterpillars, it is claimed, is the average number of such insects destroyed by each robin annually; and of this quantity about one-half or more are cut-worms. We need not stop to ask whether or not the destruction of these will pay for the cherries and berries eaten. Summing up the work of our birds as relates to their destruction of insects, it can be briefly stated as follows: "In the air swallows and swifts are coursing rapidly to and fro, ever in pursuit of the insects which constitute their sole food. When they retire, the night-hawks and whippoorwills take up the chase, catching moths and other nocturnal insects which would escape the dayflying birds. Flycatchers lie in wait, darting from ambush at passing prey, and with a suggestive click of the bill returning to their post. The warblers, light, active creatures, flutter about the terminal foliage, and with almost the skill of a hummingbird, pick insects from leaf or blossom. The vireos patiently explore the under sides of leaves and odd nooks and corners to see that no skulker escapes. The woodpeckers, nuthatches, and creepers attend to the trunks and limbs, examining carefully each inch of bark for insects' eggs and larvae, or excavating for the ants and borers they hear within. On the ground the hunt is continued by the thrushes, sparrows, and other birds that feed on the innumerable forms of terrestrial insects. Few places in which insects exist are neglected; even some species which pass their entire lives in the water are preyed upon by aquatic birds." In nearly every case where the food habits of our birds have been carefully studied, do we find that the good done far exceeds the possible harm that might be inflicted by our birds. Allowing twenty-five insects per day as an average diet for each individual bird, and estimating that we have about one and one-half birds to the acre, or in round numbers 75,000,000 birds in Nebraska, there would be required 1,875,000,000 insects for each day's rations. Again estimating the number of insects required to fill a bushel at 120,000, it would take 15,625 bushels of insects to feed our birds for a single day, or 2,343,750 bushels for 150 days. These estimates are very low when we take into account the numbers of insects that various kinds of our birds have been known to destroy in a single day. For example, the stomach of four chickadees contained 1,028 eggs of cankerworms. Four others contained about 600 eggs and 105 mature females of this same insect. The stomach *Frank M. Chapman in Bird Life-D. Appleton & Co. of a single Bob-white contained 101 potato-beetles; and that of another upwards of 500 chinch-bugs. A yellow-billed cuckoo shot at six in the morning contained forty-three tent caterpillars. A robin had eaten 175 larvae of Bibio, which feed upon the roots of grasses, etc. Birds, like all other animals, feed upon that food which is most readily obtained, hence the insectivorous kinds destroy those insects which are the most numerous-the injurious species; and likewise the seed-eaters subsist largely upon the seeds of our weeds. |