224 ENTOMOLOGY 



and the total number destroyed annually is inconceivably large. The 

 house wren is almost exclusively insectivorous, feeding upon caterpillars 

 and other larvee, ants, grasshoppers, gnats, beetles, bugs, spiders, and 

 myriopods. The swallows, also, are highly insectivorous; "most of 

 their food is captured on the wing, and consists of small moths, two- 

 winged flies, especially crane-flies, beetles in great variety, flying bugs, 

 and occasionally small dragon-flies. The young are fed with insects." 

 Ninety per cent, of the food of the kingbird "consists of insects, includ- 

 ing such noxious species as May-beetles, click-beetles, wheat and fruit 

 weevils, grasshoppers, and leaf hoppers." The honey bees eaten by this 

 bird are insignificant in number. Woodpeckers destroy immense num- 

 bers of wood-boring larvae, bark-insects, ants, caterpillars, etc. The 

 cuckoos "are unique in having a taste for insects that other birds reject. 

 Most birds are ready to devour a smooth caterpillar that comes in their 

 way, but they leave the hairy varieties severely alone. The cuckoos, 

 however, make a specialty of devouring such unpalatable creatures; 

 even stink-bugs and the poisonous spiny larvae of the lo moth are freely 

 taken." Caterpillars form fifty per cent, of the food for the year; 

 Orthoptera (grasshoppers, katydids, and tree crickets), thirty per cent.; 

 Coleoptera and Hemiptera, six per cent, each; and flies and ants are 

 taken in small quantities. "The nestling birds are fed chiefly with 

 smooth caterpillars and grasshoppers, their stomachs probably being 

 unable to endure the hairy caterpillars. All in all, the cuckoos are of 

 the highest economic value. They do no harm and accomplish great 

 good. If the orchardist could colonize his orchards with them, he would 

 escape much loss." The quail feeds largely upon insects during the 

 summer, frequently eating the Colorado potato beetle and the army 

 worm; the prairie hen has similar food habits but lives almost exclusively 

 on grasshoppers, when these are abundant. 



The Insect Food of Birds. "There are few groups of injurious 

 insects that enter so largely into the composition of the food of birds as 

 do the locusts, or short-horned grasshoppers, of the family Acridiidae. 

 The enormous destructive power of these insects is well known, but our 

 indebtedness to birds in checking their oscillations is less generally recog- 

 nized." Professor Aughey, who has made extensive studies upon the 

 relation of birds to the Rocky Mountain locust, found that upon one 

 occasion 6 robins had eaten 265 of these insects, 5 catbirds 152, 3 blue- 

 birds 67, 7 barn swallows 139, 7 night hawks 348, 16 yellow-billed cuckoos 

 416, 8 flickers 252, 8 screech owls 219, and i humming bird 4; while 

 crows and blue- jays had eaten large numbers of the locusts; and grouse, 

 quail and prairie hen, enormous numbers. Even shore birds, such as 



