14 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



office well, except where some foreign pest has been introduced 

 which they arc not accustomed to. 



Chipping sparrows are very useful in the garden because they 

 feed on the insects that destroy the low growing crops, and 

 they also eat the seeds of weeds. The Department of Agricul- 

 ture tells us that the native sparrows of the United States save 

 the farmers of this country $35,000,000 a year by destroying 

 weed seeds. I do not know how they figure that out, for it 

 seems to me that weeds are a benefit to the farmer in one way* 

 because they keep him tilling the soil, — but that is the way 

 they figure it, and birds destroy enormous numbers of the seeds 

 of weeds. 



The song sparrow, which feeds on the insects of the low 

 ground, such as the cabbage plant lice and cabbage worms, is 

 a little bird which sings almost the year round, either north or 

 south. It is well named the song sparrow. 



I suppose that if you orchardists had enough chebecs in your 

 orchards you would not have any railroaded apples, because 

 this little flycatcher, so Prof. Hodge says, eats the fly, the parent 

 of the railroad worm. If we could only attract these little 

 birds into our orchards, we should have less trouble with the 

 railroad worm. Any birds which eat fruit worms are useful 

 in the orchard. We find that many birds in the orchard eat 

 insects which you cannot destroy by ordinary arsenical spraying. 



It is an interesting sight to see a vireo feeding her young. 

 These young when recently hatched are naked and blind and 

 know only enough to hold up their mouths and open them for 

 food. And the mother bird swallows insects and partly digests 

 them in her stomach or gullet and then regurgitates them or 

 throws them up into the mouths of the young. She forces her 

 bill right down into the throat of the young bird. You may 

 see a pine warbler feeding her fuU fledged young. She feeds 

 it with full grown insects often alive. She usually forces them 

 well down into the throat, and if she does not, sometimes the 

 insects get away. I remember seeing a large hairy caterpillar 

 crawl out of the throat of a young bird. 



I suppose that there is no help for the grass in the fields unless 

 we have the birds and the other enemies of insects there, for 

 we cannot «pray with poisonous insecticides the grass that we 

 must cut for hay. Therefore we must depend on these birds, 



