Kingbird. 67 



and are heard chiefly in the mating and breeding season. 

 Its notes are fewer and less forcible after the home circle 

 is broken, and the youngsters become independent mem- 

 bers of avian society. 



The kingbirds are fond of telegraph wires along rail- 

 roads, from which they can dash out to secure insects 

 whirring through the air. Summits of small trees, and 

 especially the tops of vervain and mullein stalks in 

 pastures, give them commanding points from which to 

 await the ajjpearance of their prey. In taking their food 

 in the air they usually fly outward and upward, often 

 twenty or thirty feet, and return with it to the same or a 

 similar perch. They feed chiefly on insects, taken almost 

 exclusively on the wing. Their popular titles of " bee 

 bird " and " bee martin " suggest that they are respon- 

 sible for the decrease of the inhabitants of the apiary ; 

 but they probably have no special relish for bees, and in 

 their behalf Dr. Elliott Coues says that they destroy a 

 thousand noxious insects for every bee they eat. The 

 apiarian can certainly aff*ord to keep a few additional 

 hives of bees for the use of these birds alone, in return 

 for their preservation of the blossoms and flowers by the 

 destruction of insect pests. 



Mr. Samuels, in his '* Birds of New England," speaks 

 thus on this subject : " The food of the kingbird consists 

 mostly of insects, which he captures usually while on the 

 wing. It seems a provision of nature, that all the fly- 

 catchers shall only take those insects that have taken 

 flight from the foliage of trees and shrubs, at the same 

 time making the warblers and other birds capture those 

 which remain concealed in such places. The kingbird, 

 in seizing a flying insect, flies in a sort of half flitting 

 hover, and seizes it with a sharp snap of the bill. Some- 

 times he descends from his perch, and captures a grass- 

 hopper that has just taken a short flight, and occasionally 

 seizes one that is crawling up some tall stalk of grass. 

 Those farmers who keep bees dislike this bird, because of 

 his bad habit of eating as many of those insects as show 

 themselves in the neighborhood of his nest; but they 

 should remember that the general interests of agriculture 

 are greater than those of a hive of bees." 



