INDIA]!TA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 449 



two great obstacles to fruit growius:. These are injurious insects and 

 plant diseases. Birds are of great benefit as they destroy insects, but 

 there are two kinds of birds, those that are friends, and those that are 

 enemies of the fruit grower. The latter class is not a very large one. It 

 is therefore necessary that the fruit grower should make the Ijirds his 

 friends, and should know the birds that are beneficial and helpful to him. 



The habits of birds vary with different years. Birds that naturally 

 feed upon certain kinds of food one year will by reason of scarcity of this 

 food, or for some other reason, subsist largely on another kind another 

 yeai*. There have been complaints published in certain agricultural 

 papers to the effect that certain birds that were supposed to be beneficial 

 to fruit growers in certain localities were harmful in others. Now there 

 are many things that may account for this. The natural food of the 

 birds may have been destroyed and they may have been compelled to sub- 

 sist upon some other food. "We all know how this is ourselves. We like 

 a good dinner, but when wo are hungry we will take what we can get, 

 we will take what is in sight. This is the same with birds. There are 

 certain birds that in one part of their range are beneficial and in another 

 are exceedingly injurious. The Bobolink is in this class, and so is the 

 Redwinged Blaekliird. Birds may be attracted to neglected orchards, 

 where they can render good service. One such orchard as this fell into the 

 hands of a man who believed that birds were beneficial and he encouraged 

 them to come to it. The birds were attracted to this orchard until the 

 number became large and the insects in the orchard were destroyed. The 

 orchard was green and bore good fruit, when other orchards in the 

 neighborhood were stripped of their leaves by insects. We are told that 

 five thousand insects will strip an average apple tree in a day, and that 

 each bird will eat sixty of these insects each day, consequently a hun- 

 dred birds in one day's work can save the foliage and fruit of a large tree. 



The Rose-breasted Grosbeaks will destroy Colorado potato beetles. 

 These beetles came originally from the west and occupied the potato 

 growing sections of our State. When they came into north?rn Indiana 

 and Illinois this little bird made war on them, and it is said that two of 

 these birds kept these beetles off a quarter of an acre of potatoes. If 

 any of you have ever "bugged" potatoes you know what a job those little 

 birds had. 



Birds will often leave their other accustomed food when they can get 

 insects. ENery seventeen years the periodical cicadas visit us. This 

 occurred two years ago and seventeen years before that, or nineteen years 

 ago. I recall having made observations of birds that lived on these 

 insects during the season while they were plentiful. A long list of birds 

 turned their attention to destroying them. This cicaila is not especiallj* 

 injurious excepting to young orchards .md nurseries, but the point is this, 

 when insects appear in unusual numbers the birds will turn their attention 

 to them to the exclusion of their ordinary diet. This is true witli other 



29-Agri. ». 



