ECONOMIC VALUE OP BIRDS. 7 



Birds digest their food so rapidly, that it is difficult to 

 estimate from the contents of a bird's stomach at a given 

 time how nmch it eats during the day. The stomach of a 

 Yellow-billed Cuckoo, shot at six o'clock in the morning, 

 contained the partially digested remains of forty-three 

 tent caterpillars, but how many it would have eaten be- 

 fore nio^ht no one can sav. 



Mr. E. II. Forbush, Ornithologist of the Board of 

 Agriculture of Massachusetts, states that the stomachs 

 of four Chickadees contained one thousand and twenty- 

 eight eggs of the cankerworm. The stomachs of four 

 other birds of the same species contained about six 

 hundred eggs and one hundred and ^ve female moths 

 of the cankerworm. The average number of eggs 

 found in twenty of these moths was one hundred and 

 eighty-five ; and as it is estimated that a Chickadee may 

 eat thirty female cankerworm moths per day during 

 the twenty -five days which these moths crawl up trees, 

 it follows that in this period each Chickadee would de- 

 stroy one hundred and thirty-eight thousand seven hun- 

 dred and fifty eggs of this noxious insect. 



Professor Forbes, Director of the Illinois State Lab- 

 oratory of J^atural History, found one hundred and 

 seventy-five larvse of Bihio — a fly which in the larval 

 stage feeds on the roots of grass — in the stomach of a 

 single Bobin, and the intestine contained probably as 

 many more. 



Many additional cases could be cited, showing the 

 intimate relation of birds to insect-life, and emphasizing 

 the necessity of protecting and encouraging these little- 

 appreciated allies of the agriculturist. 



The service rendered man by birds in killing the 

 small rodents so destructive to crops is performed by 

 Hawks and Owls — birds the uninformed farmer con- 

 siders his enemies. The truth is that, with two excep- 



