CONTROL. OF INSECT PESTS McATEE 421 



TERMITES OR WHITE ANTS (ISOPTERA). 



At least three times the writer has personally made the observa- 

 tion, and he has had similar reports from others, that English 

 isparrows, discovering a swarm of winged termites emerging from 

 the nest, prey upon them so persistently that but few individuals 

 escape. 



GRASSHOPPERS AND CRICKETS (ORTHOPTERA). 



There are at hand 31 instances of control and 19 of suppression 

 of these insects in 13 States and 1 Canadian province. Among 

 the authorities for the statements are included the following en- 

 tomologists: Prof. Cyrus Thomas, Prof. Lawrence Bruner, Dr. E. 

 Dwight Sanderson, Mr. Norman Criddle, Dr. H. C. Severin, and 

 Messrs. A. C. Burrill, J. E. Horton, C. E. Pemberton, C. L. Corkins, 

 and Max Reeher. Doctor Sanderson, in his report* on the differ- 

 ential locust {Melanoplus diff erentialis) in Texas, states that birds 

 " undoubtedly did more than any other natural agency to check 

 the pest." Mr. Reelier remarks that birds were so efficient in con- 

 trolling the coulee cricket {Peranahmis scabricolUs) in the Dry 

 Coulee region, Washington State, in 1918, that arrangements for 

 a 1919 control campaign were abandoned. Meadowlarks were al- 

 most entirely responsible for a complete clean-up of the area.'^ 



Mr. C. C. Clute relates the following instance of money saved 

 through attracting bird enemies of grasshoppers in Iowa: 



I know one farmer in particular who lost durin;? one summer three rows 

 of corn 40 rods long. The corn grew next to a fence row heavily sodded with 

 bluegrass, which produced swarms of grasshoppers. For the sake of the 

 exi)eriment alone, for this farmer was a skeptic, last spring he put up 21 

 bird houses, placed 2 rods apart, on the fence along the 40 rods. The houses 

 were some that he and the boys had made, during the winter months, from 

 dry goods boxes obtained in town. Thirteen of the 21 liouses were inhabited 

 during the following summer, 6 by wrens. 4 by bluebirds, and 3 by colonics 

 of purple martins. The grasshoppers that summer made a rich living for 

 the birds, and when the fall came that farmer had the satisfactio;i of gather- 

 ing 25 bushels of corn from the three rows that grew next to the fence, 

 right where there had been no corn at all the year before." 



An account of bird control of Orthoptera can hardly omit refer- 

 ence to the historic case of s'uppression of the Mormon cricket 

 {Anahrtis simplex) by California gulls in the early days in Utah. 

 Hon. George Q. Cannon, speaking of this insect and its bird enemies 



* Bull. 57, U. S. Bur. Ent. 1906. p. 22. 



8 In Burrill, A. C. Calif. Fish and Game. 6, No. 1, Jan., 1920, p. 38. 



" Iowa Conservation, .Tanuary-March, 1917, Vol. I, No. 1, p. 12. 



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