WAX WING 143 



is most abundant. The Cedar-bird eats cater- 

 pillars, spiders, and grasshoppers, but does most 

 marked good in destroying the elm leaf-beetle 

 that strips our village and city trees of leaves. 

 Mrs. Mary Treat writes of one town in which the 

 elms had been ruined for several years before the 

 Cedar-birds came, and which were afterward com- 

 paratively free from beetles. From one calcula- 

 tion, it is shown that 30 Cedar-birds would de- 

 stroy 9,000 worms during the month when the 

 cutworm caterpillar is exposed. 



To i^revent the Cedar-bird from eating culti- 

 vated fruit, and to attract it to secure its help in 

 destrojang caterpillars, it would be well to plant 

 the common bushes upon whose berries it feeds, 

 such as blackberry, wild cherry, choke-cherry, 

 sour gum, flowering dogwood, rough-leaved dog- 

 wood, chokeberry, red cedar, Juneberry, hack- 

 berry, black haw, black elder, huckleberry, frost 

 grape, barberry, mistletoe, or pokeberry. 



The AVaxwings stand in a family by themselves 

 among eastern birds, coming between the Swal- 

 lows and the Shrikes. They are unique among 

 North American birds in having wax-like append- 

 ages on the tips of their wing-feathers (Fig. 72). 

 As we run over the groups of birds we have had, 

 we see how the Cedar-birds differ from them in 

 general characters. In the matter of coloration, 

 the earth, leaf, and stubble browns of the ground 

 birds are modified in them, for they approach 



