148 The Food of Birds. 



Family SAXICOLID^. (The Stonechats.) 

 SiALiA siALis, L. The Bluebird. 



This beautiful and beloved bird, endeared to the student 

 of nature by every particular of its plumage, song and way 

 of life, is also one of the most popular of all birds with 

 farmers and gardeners. Living under the eyes of men from 

 the first yielding days of the later winter until the year 

 grows chill and dark with the retreat of autumn, it has 

 been praised most warmly for its tireless service of man 

 by those who knew it best. A cursory observation of its 

 feeding habits will strongly support the general impression 

 of its usefulness. Most frequently it takes a short, quick 

 flight to the ground from a fence-post, or a low branch of a 

 tree, and, after a moment's pause, returns to its perch 

 with a caterpillar or a grasshopper or some other insect in 

 its beak, which it devours at its leisure, repeating this 

 operation so frequently that none can doubt its enormous 

 destructiveness to insect life. 



It is true that a little reflection will suggest that, as it evi- 

 ently sees its prey before it leaves its perch, it must usually 

 take only the most conspicuous and the most active in- 

 sects, and that there is no security that these wall be the 

 most injurious — that they may not be, in fact, among the 

 most beneficial ; but this consideration does not seem to 

 have made any impression, and the bluebird remains to 

 this day substantially without reproach. 



I have now examined carefully, with the microscope, 

 the contents of one hundred and eight stomachs of this 

 species, of which ten were taken in February, twenty- 

 one in March, thirteen in April, nine in May, ten in 

 June, nine in July, twelve in August, ten in September, 

 two in October and twelve in December (in southern Illi- 

 nois). I propose to present the data for each of these 

 months; to summarize them for the year; to estimate the 

 benefit and injury indicated to farm and garden, and to 

 make a comparison of the food of this bird with that of 

 the robin, and of the thrushes generally. 



