BIRD BIOGRAPHIES 



of September until April or early May, when it goes to 

 its more northerly nesting ground. 



Kinglets and chickadees are industrious searchers for 

 insects' eggs. Their value is almost inestimable. Mr. 

 Forbush tells of watching the "Gold-crest" hunt for its food 

 among the pines. He says: "The birds were fluttering 

 about among the trees. Each one would hover for a mo- 

 ment before a tuft of pine *needles,' and then either alight 

 upon it and feed or pass on to another. I examined the 

 'needles' after the Kinglets had left them, and could find 

 nothing on them; but when a bird was disturbed before it 

 had finished feeding, the spray from which it had been 

 driven was invariably found to be infested with numerous 

 black specks, the eggs of plant lice. Evidently the birds 

 were cleaning each spray thoroughly, as far as they 

 went." ^ 



Mr. Forbush tells also of observing the work of seven 

 kinglets in a grove of white pine which "must have been 

 infested with countless thousands of these eggs, for the 

 band of Kinglets remained there until March 25, almost 

 three months later, apparently feeding most of the time on 

 these eggs. When they had cleared the branches, the little 

 birds fluttered about the trunks, hanging poised on busy 

 wing, like Hummingbirds before a flower, meanwhile rap- 

 idly pecking the clinging eggs from the bark. In those 

 three months they must have suppressed hosts of little tree 

 pests, for I have never seen birds more industrious and as- 

 siduous in their attentions to the trees. One might expect 

 such work of Creepers or of Woodpeckers ; but the Kinglets 



1 "Useful Birds and Their Protection," by E. H. Forbush, pages 161, 

 162, 163. 



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