THE YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO 



The apple-tree tent-caterpillar and the red-humped apple- 

 caterpillar are also eaten. In all, caterpillars constitute 

 two-thirds of the total food of the yellow-billed cuckoo in 

 the South. Few birds feed so exclusively upon any one 

 order of insects. 



"The natural food for cuckoos would seem to be bugs 

 and caterpillars which feed upon leaves, as these birds 

 live in the shade among the leaves of trees and bushes. 

 Not so with grasshoppers, whose favorite haunts are on the 

 ground in the blazing sunshine, yet these creatures are the 

 second largest item in the cuckoo's diet. Grasshoppers 

 are so agreeable an article of food that many a bird ap- 

 parently forsakes its usual feeding grounds and takes to 

 the earth for them. Thus it is with the cuckoos; they 

 quit their cool, shady retreats in order to gratify their 

 taste for these insects of the hot sunshine. But there are 

 some members of the grasshopper order that live in the 

 shade, as katydids, tree crickets, and ground crickets, and 

 these are all used to vary the cuckoo's bill of fare." ^ It 

 eats, also, bugs that injure oranges and melons, and the 

 cotton-boll weevil in large numbers. 



2 Farmers' Bulletin 755, Biological Survey, U. S. Dept. of Agr'iculture. 



[233] 



