60 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



and the number of caterpillars they eat is incredible. Professor Beal states 

 that two thousand, seven hundred and seventy-one caterpillars were found in 

 the stomachs of one hundred and twenty-one Cuckoos — an average of more 

 than twenty-one each. Dr. Otto Lugger found several hundred small hairy 

 caterpillars in the stomach of a single bird. The poisonous, spined caterpillars 

 of the lo moth, the almost equally disagreeable caterpillars of the brown-tail 

 moth, and the spiny elm caterpillar, are eaten with avidity. 



He says elsewhere (1927) : 



When, in time, the inside of the bird's stomach becomes so felted with a 

 mass of hairs and spines that it obstructs digestion, the bird can shed the 

 entire stomach-lining, meanwhile growing a new one. * * * Mr. Mosher, 

 a competent observer, watched a Yellow-billed Cuckoo eat 41 gypsy caterpillars 

 in fifteen minutes, and later he saw another consume 47 forest tent cater- 

 pillars in six minutes. * * * Dr. Amos W. Butler [1897] says that he has 

 known these Cuckoos to destroy every tent caterpillar in a badly infested 

 orchard and tear up all the nests in half a day. This species frequently feeds 

 on or near the ground, and there gets an enormous number of locusts and 

 other pests. In summer and autumn it feeds to some extent on small wild 

 fruits, such as the raspberry, blackberry and wild grape. 



The fall web worm is a destructive pest on certain trees, but few 

 birds will eat it. Dr. Sylvester D. Judd (1902) noted that, on a 

 Maryland farm, "a pair of yellow-billed cuckoos continually ex- 

 tracted them from the webs. The destruction of this insect is an 

 habitual practice with the cuckoo. In a single stomach of the species 

 examined by Professor Beal there were 325 of the larvae." 



Henry C. Denslow writes to me that he fed many hairy cater- 

 pillars to a cuckoo that he had in captivity, and says: "Many of 

 these this bird sheared the hairs from by slowly moving them from 

 end to end through its beak by a side-shifting motion of the man- 

 dibles. The removed hairs collected in a little bunch and, at the end 

 of the caterpillar, fell to the floor. Most of the hairs were thus 

 shorn from these caterpillars. Other caterpillars were swallowed 

 entire, as I gave them to him, hairs and all." 



Walter B. Barrows (1912) says that this cuckoo feeds freely on 

 elderberries and mulberries and that "large quantities of beetles and 

 bugs also are consumed, and both species of cuckoo seem to be very 

 fond of grasshoppers, eating especially such forms as frequent shrub- 

 bery and trees, among these the destructive tree crickets (Oecanthus). 

 Ten specimens examined by Professor Aughey, in Nebraska, con- 

 tained 416 locusts and grasshoppers, and 152 other insects." 



Audubon (1842) writes: "In autumn they eat many grapes, and 

 I have seen them supporting themselves by a momentary motion of 

 their wings opposite a bunch, as if selecting the ripest, when they 

 would seize it and return to a branch, repeating their visits in this 

 maimer until satiated." 



