66 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



Maine, covering various portions from north to south, stopping 

 two weeks in a place and teaching in a summer school, I never 

 went out one morning with a class without finding the yellow- 

 billed cuckoo. It destroys thousands upon thousands of tent 

 caterpillars that would otherwise live to damage the fruit crop. 

 While some of our birds devour every smooth caterpillar they 

 find, they have no taste for the hairy varieties, but the cuckoo 

 prefers them. It eats tent caterpillars until its alimentary 

 tract from throat to vent is lined with caterpillar hairs. Cut 

 one of these birds open and it looks as though it was lined with 

 fur. 



After our summer birds have gleaned all summer long from 

 the trunks of our trees, they leave us, and it does not seem as 

 if anything could be left of eggs and insects under the bark 

 to support the army of insect eating birds that comes down to 

 spend the winter with us. The chickadee nests here in small 

 numbers, but during the winter months it comes down from 

 the north in abundance. Think of the amount of food that is 

 required to support the life of these warm-blooded, active and 

 cheery companions of our winter walks. Last winter the ther- 

 mometer ran as low as 50° below zero, yet these hardy birds 

 bent cheerfully to their task of saving these very apples we 

 have seen at this meeting. Even in the terrible cold they sang 

 at their work, chlck-a-dee-dee-dee. 



The white breasted nuthatch is another bird that nests here 

 rarely, but as soon as cold weather comes on, his numbers in- 

 crease and he begins his search up and down the trunks. His 

 song is yank-yank-yank-yank, and he. too, must search dili- 

 gently for insect food that escaped the sharp eyes and ready 

 bills of our summer residents. 



Another winter bird is the brown creeper. Like the wood- 

 peckers, his tail feathers are fitted for support in climbing. 

 His bill is long and slender and curved to facilitate investiga- 

 tions into insect conditions under bark scales. From early 

 morn till dark he must search for insect food. His particular 

 sphere of action, like the woodpecker's, is the tree trunk. His 

 body is so small that it seems impossible for him to maintain 

 an existence in the terrible cold. Starting at the bottom of the 

 tree — he never crawls down — he begins and circles around the 

 trunk, hunting, hunting: as soon as he gets to the branches. 



