9 
tensive group of highly useful, as well as beautiful, birds. They spend most 
of their time during the summer months when not actually occupied with 
nest building and rearing their young, in hunting for and destroying different 
kinds of insects. But this is not all the good they do. In fall, winter, and 
early spring, when Mother Earth has lost her beautiful green dress and is 
clothed instead in somber browns and wrapped in a mantle of snow and ice, 
the longspurs, snowbuntings, snowbirdsand some of the sparrows that have 
remained with us, are busily engaged in gathering for themselves a living. 
They hop and fly about from place to place hunting for and picking up little 
seeds of grasses, weeds, shrubs, and trees with which to feed themselves and 
keep alive until the warm weather of spring returns and brings back to them 
the abundant supply of nourishing insetts of which they are so fond. Even 
during this busy cold season, they chirrup merrily as they work, so satisfied 
are they with the kind of life they are living. The English, or European 
House-sparrow, has the worst reputation of the entire family. But even 
this bird has some good traits which tend to secure for it our friendship. 
The swallows, as we all know, are insect destroyers; and, seizing their prey 
as they fly, they naturally take such forms among these pests as flies, gnats, 
and mosquitoes—our worst personal enemies, We _ should by all means 
encourage these birds to build their nests in our barns and sheds in order 
that they may pay rent by destroying the’ various flies that attack and worry 
ourselves and our domestic animals. 
The shrikes or butcher-birds are genuine brigands or pirates when it comes 
to killing other forms of life. They are true to their name, and butcher large 
numbers of insects, mice, lizards, small snakes, and even occasionally a few 
of the smaller birds. They take their prey to some thorn bush or barbwire 
fence and impale the victims for future use or to dry up and blowaway. The 
good they do will more than outweigh the harm which they inflict. 
The vireos or greenlets, as they are commonly called, which frequent 
thickets and hedgerows, live almost entirely upon an insect diet. Their food 
is composed chiefly of little caterpillars and grubs picked from the leaves of 
small trees and shrubs which form the shelter in which they make their homes. 
They are not entirely averse to eating some of the hairy forms, and in this 
respect aid the cuckoos mentioned in a preceding paragraph. 
The warblers are insect destroyers. Brightly-colored, active creatures as 
they are, they fill a gap in nature which would be empty without them. 
They flit about the terminal twigs and leaves of our trees and shrubs where 
they detect and capture many of our smaller, but at the same time very 
dangerous, insect pests. Plant-lice and the smaller caterpillars are at times 
quite prominent in their bill of fare. 
Much could be written about birds like the wrens, the Mockingbird, and the 
Catbird, but they are too well known in one way or another to make it neces- 
sary to spend time or space here for the purpose of introducing them anew. 
Suffice it to say, that they more than pay for what they eat by killing off 
some of the decidedly harmful insects. Then, too, they are to be numbered 
among the most beautiful singers of the feathered choir, which latter fact 
in itself fully offsets the harm done by them in the way of fruit eating. 
