52 The Ottawa Naturalist. (Aug. -Sept. 



ing; but probably there is always an occasional spinster or bachelor 

 bird fated to spend the summer alone unless some such accident as 

 this provides a mate. 



Some of the birds meet their affinities much sooner than others, 

 for the first young of the colony are out two weeks before the last 

 broods are hatched. By the first of July most of the doors are crowded 

 with little heads, and the whole front of the house blossoms suddenly 

 with enormous yellow mouths whenever an old bird sweeps in with 

 its beak full of insects. Numerous counts made at different times of 

 the day during the first two weeks of July, 1917, showed that, with 

 remarkable regularity, a parent arrived with food every thirty seconds. 

 This year nine pairs occupied the house, and assuming that each pair 

 had four young, and that they were fed in turn, then each nestling was 

 fed ever}- eighteen minutes. A similar count for a whole day, from 

 4 a.m. to 8 p.m., cited in Chapman's Handbook of Birds of Eastern 

 North America, when reduced to the same basis as my results, gives a 

 feeding every twenty minutes. This is the colony's busiest time, and 

 the strain begins to tell on the old birds, their glossy plumage becoming 

 dishevelled and soiled. As the young grow up, however, they are not 

 fed so often. After the middle of Jul}' the pace slackens considerably, 

 and the old birds have more time to sit around on the verandahs and 

 nearl)_\ r trees, and gossip and scold. 



The martins usually fly high but they do not hunt far afield, and 

 my colony can generally be seen hawking within a radius of a quarter 

 of a mile from their home. They appear to find ample food in this 

 comparatively small area, an indication of the large number of 

 insects that must frequent the upper air. A considerable proportion of 

 their prey seems to consist of dragon flies. Now the purple martin 

 stands very high in the list of birds useful to mankind, but in destroy- 

 ing the rapacious and carnivorous dragon fly, it cannot be said to be 

 conferring any favor on us. The truth is, in order to determine the 

 value of an) species of bird to man, it is necessary to open an account 

 with it, debiting it on the one side with the beneficial insects it con- 

 sumes, or the toll it levies on our vegetables or cultivated fruits, and 

 crediting it on the other side with the noxious insects or weed seeds it 

 destroys When this is done, very few birds will be found without a 

 large balance to the good; and I doubt if we should be able to refuse 

 even the cheque of the English sparrow with the excuse of "no funds." 



besides the supply of food to the young, a very important duty of 

 the parents is the removal of excremental matter from the nest. As 

 they leave after feeding their brood, they almost always carry away a 

 dropping enclosed in its gelatinous sac, generally conveying it some 

 distance from the nest, but sometimes letting it fall alarmingly close to 

 the inoffensive observer. Once or twice a mother was seen to dispose 



