there are some true hot-weather songsters, such as the brightly hued indigo bunt- 

 ings and thistle-finches. Among the finches one of the most musical and plaintive 

 songs is that of the bush-sparrow — I do not know why the books call it field- 

 sparrow, for it does not dwell in the open fields like the vesper-finch, the savannah- 

 sparrow, and the grasshopper-sparrow, but among the cedars and bayberry bushes 

 and young locusts in the same places where the prairie warbler is found. Nor is 

 it only the true songs that delight us. We love to hear the flickers call, and we 

 readily pardon any one of their number which, as occasionally happens, is bold 

 enough to wake us in the early morning by drumming on the shingles of the 

 roof. In our ears the red-winged blackbirds have a very attractive note. We 

 love the screaming of the red-tailed hawks as they soar high overhead, and even 

 the calls of the night herons that nest in the tall water maples by one of the wood 

 ponds on our place, and the little green herons that nest beside the salt marsh. 

 It is hard to tell just how much of the- attraction in any bird-note lies in the 

 music itself and how much' in the associations. This is w^hat makes it so use- 

 less to try to compare the bird songs of one country with those of another. A 

 man who is worth anything can no more be entirely impartial in speaking of the 

 bird songs with which from his earliest childhood he has been familiar than he 

 can be entirely impartial in speaking of his own family. — The Outlook. 



Black-Headed Grosbeak 



{Zamelodia melanocephala) 



Length, about 8J4 inches. 



Range: Breeds from the Pacific coast to Nebraska and the Dakotas, and 

 from southern Canada to southern Mexico ; winters in Mexico. 



Habits and economic status : The black-headed grosbeak takes the place in 

 the West of the rosebreast in the East, and like it is a fine songster. Like it 

 also, the blackhead readily resorts to orchards and gardens and is common in agri- 

 tural districts. The bird has a very powerful bill and easily crushes or cuts into 

 the firmest fruit. It feeds upon cherries, apricots and other fruits, and also does 

 some damage to green peas and beans, but it is so active a foe of certain horti- 

 cultural pests that we can afford to overlook its faults. Several kinds of scale 

 insects are freely eaten, and one, the black olive scale, constitutes a fifth of the 

 total food. In May many cankerworms and codling moths are consumed, and 

 almost a sixth of the bird's seasonal food consists of flower beetles, which do 

 incalculable damage to cultivated flowers and to ripe fruit. For each quart of 

 fruit consumed by the black-headed grosbeak it destroys in actual bulk more 

 than one and one-half quarts of black olive scales and one quart of flower beetles, 

 besides a generous quantity of codling moth pupa^ and cankerworms. It is 

 ol)vious that such work as this pays many times over for the fruit destroyed. 



37 



