WESTERN BIRDS Blackbird 



Another man testified that these birds came to his 

 cornfield and picked the worms out of the top of the 

 ears. Every one living in California knows how hard it 

 is to get "wormless" sweet-corn and will, I am sure, 

 appreciate and approve the work done by the birds. 

 Most people, however, seeing the birds there, would have 

 instantly mistrusted that they were eating the corn, so 

 prone are they to condemn our feathered friends on cir- 

 cumstantial evidence. 



Dr. Harold C. Bryant, who has made a thorough 

 investigation of the economic value of California birds, 

 reports these Blackbirds as doing much to check insect 

 outbreaks at various times. 



In the 1912 outbreak of grasshoppers in the northern 

 part of the State, the birds of various species left their 

 homes and went to the infested spots, even changing their 

 food-habits and eating grasshoppers in amazing quanti- 

 ties. Among the most useful were the Brewer Black- 

 birds, Meadowlarks, Kingbirds, and Orioles. At every 

 outbreak of the army worms these birds do yeoman work 

 eating them. In the nymphalid butterfly outbreak of 

 1911, Dr. Bryant found that these Blackbirds were the 

 most efficient destroyers of the insects, both on account 

 of their numbers and their food-habits, eating 95 per 

 cent of all the butterflies eaten by birds. It was found, 

 also, that 83 per cent of their food was animal. 



In a recent investigation of the alfalfa weevil in Utah, 

 carried on by the Biological Survey, and told in Bulletin 

 197 by E. B. Kalmbach, assistant biologist, the Brewer 

 Blackbirds are reported among the most efficient enemies 

 of the weevils. It was found that one of them had eaten 

 the largest number of these weevils recorded for any 

 bird,, a total of 374 larva?, 65 pupae, and 3 adults, which 

 comprised 96 per cent of the food. 



And yet people often ask what good the Blackbirds do I 



141 



