8 
they feed mostly on mice, squirrels, gophers, prairie dogs, and rabbits, as 
well as on many harmful kinds of insects. 
Our Yellow-billed and Black-billed Cuckoos feed chiefly on hairy cater- 
pillars and several other kinds of insects which they find lurking among the 
leaves of trees. Although considered among our shyer species, they even 
come about our houses and venture into towns and cities for their favorite 
insect food. 
There are few persons who will not admit that the woodpeckers as a family 
are very useful birds. Feeding as they do, on the young of wood-boring 
insects, they can do more relative good for the number of insects destroyed 
than if they feed on such kinds as attack the leaves. A single borer left undis- 
turbed might kill a tree, while hundreds of leaf eaters of the same size would 
scarcely be noticed if warning of their presence depended on the effect their feed- 
ing had upon the appearance of the same tree. The commonest kinds of wood- 
peckers in. Nebraska are the Flicker, Red-headed, Downy, and Hairy, all of 
which are often seen about our groves and orchards, where they carefully 
hunt for borers and other harmful insects. 
Birds like the Whippoorwill, Nighthawk, and Chimney Swift eat nothing 
but insects such as they catch in the air while flying about. The first two 
are night fliers, while the other is one of our birds that flies and feeds during 
daytime. 
The family to which the King-bird or Bee-bird belongs is also one that is 
made up of insect eaters. They catch such kinds as flies, butterflies, moths, 
beetles, and grasshoppers. The few bees eaten by the Bee-bird should not . 
count against the other members of the family, nor should we blame even the 
bee-killer himself too much for the occasional rascal of his kind that prefers 
to sit near a hive and catch drones and, rarely, a worker. 
Crows and their relatives, the magpies and jays, are sometimes called 
rascals. Perhaps there is good reason in a number of cases for giving these 
birds so bad a name; but we must not judge them too hastily, for sometimes 
there are good deeds done even by the greatest of rascals. After finding out 
what these deeds are, good and bad, we may think that enough good has been 
done to at least give the ‘‘rascal’’ another chance. All of these birds eat 
more insects, bulk for bulk, than they do of any other substance. The Blue 
Jay does much of the mischief for which we blame the Robin, orioles, and 
thrushes, and then sneaks away like a thief. He also robs the nests of our 
smaller and weaker birds at times. To partly offset these mean traits he . 
destroys large numbers of injurious insects. 
The meadowlarks, orioles, and blackbirds are the most important destroyers 
of such insect pests as attack field crops. They remain with us during the 
whole year save for only a few months in the winter; gathering in large flocks, 
as several kinds do, they can wipe out an insect plague ina short time. The 
large flocks of red-winged blackbirds which visit our cornfields do so to secure 
the destructive ear-worm which abounds at that time of the year, and not 
for the corn, as many of us suppose. Don’t kill any of these useful birds, 
because they more than pay for the vegetable food which they eat. 
Our sparrows and their relatives of the family Fringillidae forma very ex- 
