418 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



flight ; but in examining the locality in 1905 I could not find one. The appar- 

 ently complete destruction of these insects may have been due in part to the 

 hard winter that ensued, but the effect produced by the birds was most obvious. 



The same writer gives an instance 12 of the destruction by birds of a 

 serious garden pest, the imported destructive pea louse {Nectaro- 

 phora destructor), which he says — 



was very prevalent in 1900, and we were prepared for its appearance in the 

 spring of 1901. The lice appeared as expected, but failed to increase as hereto- 

 fore. One morning one of the boys at work in the garden [ Wareham, Mass.] re- 

 ported that chipping sparrows were eating the pea louse. This proved true, for 

 all through the season and also the next season wherever peas were planted these 

 birds appeared and fed on these plant lice persistently, day after day, so long 

 as they could be found. A row of late peas about 100 yards in length became in- 

 fested in August. These peas were one-eighth of a mile from where the early 

 peas were planted and in a locality not ordinarily frequented by the chipping 

 sparrow, but the birds soon found them and haunted the vines day after day 

 until the lice were so reduced in numbers that they did no further injury. 



One of the jumping plant lice, the pear psylla (Psylla pyricola) , is 

 often seriously destructive. H. A. Surface, State entomologist of 

 Pennsylvania, states 13 that — 



A prominent grower of pears in New York reported to us that he had lost many 

 of his pear crops, amounting to thousands of bushels, by this pest, and in the 

 fall, as it was present in great numbers on the trunks of the trees, it appeared 

 that it would pass the winter there and destroy his crops again next year. 

 However, the white-breasted nuthatches came to the orchard in numbers, and 

 he encouraged them to remain by fastening pieces of fat meat in his trees and 

 protected them from molestation. The nuthatches remained and fed on the 

 pest all winter and cleaned up the trees so effectively that he could scarcely 

 find any of the insects in the spring. 



Numerous species of birds feed upon scale insects and some of 

 them do very effective work. An item current in the western press 

 in 1908 was to the effect that Dr. W. J. Chambers, of Los Angeles, 

 California, who kept a number of valley quail (Lophortyx calif or- 

 nica vallicola) found them very efficient destroyers of scale insects. 

 A brood of young quail quickly cleared the black scales from a num- 

 ber of marguerite bushes in the doctor's yard. In correspondence 

 Doctor Chambers has confirmed this report and adds that in his 

 opinion two or three dozen quail in a 10-acre orchard will keep the 

 black scale down to a minimum and render the expense of fumiga- 

 tion unnecessary. 



COLEOPTERA (BEETLES). 



Many of the most notorious pests of farm, forest, and orchard 

 belong among the Coleoptera or beetles. One that made a spectacu- 

 lar and destructive advance from west to east across the United 



12 Two Years with the Birds on a Farm, p. 29, 1908. 



18 Zool. Bui. Penn. Dept. Agr., Vol. V, No. 3, p. 79, July, 1907. 



