CAPE MAY WARBLER 219 



The feeding habits of the birds may, from the present knowledge, be declared 

 practically entirely beneficial. In return it seems not too much to expect that 

 we should without complaint furnish, for a few days in the year, the drink to 

 wash the great numbers of our insect enemies down to their destruction; and 

 to consider these two little fellows as among the worthiest as they are among 

 the prettiest of our warbler friends. 



Prof. Maurice Brooks (1933), speaking of this warbler in West 

 Virginia, says : 



We had at that time [1009] a small commercial vineyard, and during the 

 first week in September, when the crop was just ripening, we were surprised 

 to find in the vineyard swarms of Cape May Warblers. We were not long in 

 doubt as to their purpose there, for within a week they had destroyed prac- 

 tically every grape we had. * * * Their method was to puncture the skin 

 of the berry at one point, extract a little juice, and move on to the next. They 

 would systematically work over every berry in the cluster, if undisturbed, and 

 they soon became exceedingly tame. It is no exaggeration to say that there 

 were hundreds of the birds in the locality. 



After the birds had made one puncture, swarms of bees and wasps soon 

 finished the work of destruction. There was no way of frightening so many 

 birds away, and we were driven to sacking our grapes in the future. The next 

 year, 1910, they returned in numbers again, destroying practically all unsacked 

 clusters, and completely cleaning out the vines of our neighbors, who raised 

 just a few grapes for their home use. 



These and other warblers have been seen drinking sap from the 

 holes dug in trees by sapsuckers, but they also obtain some insects 

 from such borings and perhaps also from the punctured grapes, which 

 make fine insect traps. However, the damage does not seem to be 

 universal, and occurs only where the birds are abundant, and then 

 for only a short time. In view of his record as an insect destroyer, 

 the laborer may be worthy of liis hire. 



To the insects mentioned as food for this warbler, A. H. Howell 

 (1932) adds small crickets, flies, leaf hoppers, termites, larvae of 

 moths, dragonflies, and daddy-long-legs. 



Behavior. — Brewster (1938) writes: 



It keeps invariably near the tops of the highest trees whence it occasionally 

 darts out after passing insects. It has a habit of singing on the extreme 

 pinnacle of some enormous fir or spruce, where it will often remain perfectly 

 motionless for ten or fifteen minutes at a time; on such occasions the bird is 

 extremely hard to find, and if shot is almost certain to lodge on some of the 

 numerous spreading branches beneath. * * ♦ In rainy or dark weather 

 they came in numbers from the woods to feed among the thickets of low firs 

 and spruces in the pastures. Here they spent much of their time hanging 

 head downward at the extremity of the branches, often continuing in this 

 position for nearly a minute at a time. They seemed to be picking minute 

 Insects from the under surface of the fir needles. They also resorted to a 

 thicket of blossoming plum trees directly under our window, where we were 

 always sure of finding several of them. There were numerous Hummingbirds 

 here also, and these, the Cape Mays were continually chasing. 



