288 ENTOMOLOGY 
grasshoppers, and leafhoppers.”” The honey bees eaten by 
this bird are insignificant in number. Woodpeckers destroy 
immense numbers of wood-boring larve, bark-insects, ants, 
caterpillars, etc. The cuckoos “are unique in having a taste 
for insects that other birds reject. Most birds are ready to 
devour a smooth caterpillar that comes in their way, but they 
leave the hairy varieties severely alone. The cuckoos, how- 
ever, make a specialty of devouring such unpalatable crea- 
tures; even stink-bugs and the poisonous spiny larvze of the lo 
moth are freely taken.”’ Caterpillars form fifty per cent. of 
the food for the year; Orthoptera (grasshoppers, katydids, 
and tree crickets), thirty per cent.; Coleoptera and Hemiptera, 
six per cent. each; and flies and ants are taken in small quanti- 
ties. ‘‘ The nestling birds are fed chiefly with smooth cater- 
pillars and grasshoppers, their stomachs probably being unable 
to endure the hairy caterpillars. All in all, the cuckoos are of 
the highest economic value. They do no harm and accom- 
plish great good. If the orchardist could colonize his or- 
chards with them, he would escape much loss.” The quail 
feeds largely upon insects during the summer, frequently eat- 
ing the Colorado potato beetle and the army worm; the prairie 
hen has similar food habits but lives almost exclusively on 
grasshoppers, when these are abundant. 
The Insect Food of Birds.—‘‘ There are few groups of 
injurious insects that enter so largely into the composition of 
the food of birds as do the locusts, or short-horned grasshop- 
pers, of the family Acridiide. The enormous destructive 
power of these insects is well known, but our indebtedness to 
birds in checking their oscillations is less generally recog- 
nized.” Professor Aughey, who has made extensive studies 
upon the relation of birds to the Rocky Mountain locust, 
found that upon one occasion 6 robins had eaten 205 of these 
insects, 5 catbirds 152, 3 bluebirds 67, 7 barn swallows 139, 7 
night hawks 348, 16 yellow-billed cuckoos 4106, 8 flickers 252, 
8 screech owls 219, and 1 humming bird 4; while crows anc 
blue-jays had eaten large numbers of the locusts; and grouse, 
