USEFUL BIRDS. 5 
shelter, even in the winter. The writer found them in 1885 on 
November 9th in Otter Tail County. They have been observed in 
Minnesota, evidently returned from the south, as early as February, 
but generally they begin to arrive the latter part of March or early 
in April, welcome harbingers of spring. 
.YELLOW-RUMPED WARBLER; MYRTLE WARBLER. 
(Plate Joie. 2.) 
One of our more common warblers, breeding in the northern 
part of the State and in Canada and observed in vicinity of Minne- 
apolis about April 15th. Found in small flocks amongst bushes and 
other low growth. Its food consists almost entirely of injurious 
insects, a small per cent only represented by fruit and seeds. It is 
particularly fond of scale insects and plant lice, and is something of 
a fly-catcher as well. It is a little over five inches in length, and can 
be easily recognized by the presence, in the adult males, of a bright 
yellow patch on rump, on top of head, and on each side of breast. 
General colors,—grayish with darker stripes, throat white, more 
or less black on breast and lower parts. In the young and in the 
adults in late fall, the colors are duller and the characteristic yellow 
of the crown and rump either very dim or absent. Length, about 
five and a half inches. Nests in evergreens a few feet above the 
ground; eggs, whitish-gray blotched with brown or blue. 
CHICKADEE. 
(Plate tT, Hic. -3:) 
Found as a resident throughout northern part of the United 
States and in Canada and Alaska. Dear to us because of its 
cheerful activity in the cold of winter when almost all other bird 
friends have left us. From an economic standpoint, a great bene- 
factor, for not only does it consume large numbers of insects in 
summer, but more than one-half the winter food consists of insects 
and their eggs. The eggs of plant lice make up one-fifth of the 
entire food; in fact, the destruction of these eggs on fruit and 
shade trees is the chief beneficial work of this bird in the winter, 
and the good it does in this way must not be underestimated. 
Examinations of the stomachs or crops of these birds have shown 
that sometimes more than four hundred and fifty eggs of plant lice 
are consumed by one bird in one day. Eggs of canker worms and 
tent caterpillars are also eaten. Four stomachs or crops examined 
showed, as the result of a single day’s feed, one thousand and 
