INTRODUCTORY. 53 



the doubtful. The first class will contain those birds which 

 feed almost exclusively upon insects or small animals, and 

 which are not known to injure fruits, grain, or anything of 

 any value to us. The second class will contain those which 

 feed principally upon fruits or grain, or which are known to 

 cause extensive injury to some of the useful products of the 

 soil, without making adequate return for their destructiveness 

 by destroying noxious insects. In the third class will be 

 placed those birds which sometimes depredate upon the useful 

 products of the soil, or upon our domestic animals (including 

 fowls and bees), and which also feed largely upon insects; so 

 that it is doubtful as to whether we are to regard them as being 

 beneficial or injurious. 



BENEFICIAL BIRDS. 



Bluebirds, pewees, flycatchers (except the beebird), swal- 

 lows, martins, wrens, chickadee, vireos or greenlets, tanagers 

 or redbirds, ground-robins, cuckoos, humming-l:)irds, warblers, 

 night-hawks, whippoorwills, meadow-larks, shrikes, butcher- 

 birds, road-runners, vultures, turkey buzzards, gulls, plovers 

 and snipes. 



The meadow-larks and plovers, and perhaps a few other 

 birds in this list, sometimes feed upon seeds, but only to a 

 limited extent, their food consisting almost exclusivel}" of 

 insects ; the shrikes and road-runners feed upon insects? 

 snakes, small lizards, etc., and the former sometimes destroy 

 small birds ; gulls feed upon insects, frogs crayfish, etc. 



INJURIOUS BIRDS. 



House-finches or red-headed linnets, cedar-birds or waxwings, 

 orioles, doves, wild geese and ducks. These are ahout the 

 only birds that are considered as being very injurious, and 

 even these partly atone for their injuries by feeding upon 

 insects. The linnets sometimes occasion considerable damage 

 by feeding upon the buds of fruit trees. (Early in Spring use 

 Remedies Nos. 5,- 6, or 7, one pound to each gallon of water 

 used, and the birds will not eat the buds.) The cedar-birds 

 and orioles feed upon fruit and berries, and the latter also feed 



