XI 
WHAT HE EATS 
Wuart the bird eats and where he gets his 
food are useful things for us to know. It has 
only lately been found out that birds are the 
most valuable of helpers to us. 
What we cannot eat ourselves, they are happy 
to live on, and things that make us a great deal 
of trouble are their daily food. 
Some of the things they are fond of are 
little animals, like mice and ground squirrels, 
that eat our crops. Others are insects which 
spoil our fruit and eat up our vegetables, canker- 
worms and cutworms, and a hundred more. 
Besides these, many birds eat the seeds of cer- 
tain weeds that farmers have to fight all the 
time. 
One reason this helps us so greatly is that 
birds eat much more for their size than we do. 
A boy of six or eight years could not possibly 
eat a whole sheep in one day, but a young bird 
can easily eat more than his own weight every 
day. 
