1780 



The Cornell Reading-Courses 



quently stomachs have been so packed with insects that when opened the 

 contents have made a pile much larger than the original size of the stomach. 

 For example, the stomach of one yellow-billed cuckoo contained 250 tent 

 caterpillers, that of a nighthawk 500 mosquitoes, that of a cedar waxwing 

 (cherry bird) 100 cankenvorms. The crop and stomach of a red-winged 

 blackbird were found to contain 1800 seeds of ragweed, that of a bobwhite 

 5000 seeds of pigeon grass, and that of a mourning dove 9200 seeds of 

 pigeon grass. These figures represent single meals of the birds in question. 



Fig. 12. — "Young birds require even more food tJian old birds." Louisiana 



water thrush feeding its young 



probably consumed where the food was very abundant, as it is in the case 

 of insect outbreaks or where weeds have become troublesome. Obser- 

 vations made in the field are no less convincing, and corroborate the 

 laboratory studies. We find recorded a scarlet tanager which devoured 

 630 gypsy moth caterpillars in 18 minutes — a rate of 2100 in an hour. A 

 Maryland yellow-throat consumed 3500 plant lice in 40 minutes — a rate 

 of 5250 in an hour. 



Young birds require even more food than do old birds, as any one who 

 has watched young birds being fed in the nest will testify. The quantity 

 of food that they require increases with their age, reaching a maximimi at 

 about the time they leave the nest. Many nests have been watched by 

 persons interested, and the number of times that the young were fed 

 recorded. A family of young martins was fed 312 times in a single day, 



