54 



The Swallows 



The swallows are insectivorous birds, taking their food on the wing. They 

 destroy a few of the useful parasite wasps, but the greater part consists of injurious 

 species : beetles, ants and flies are the forms most commonly taken. Five species of 

 the swallows occur in Quebec, as follows : — 



Purple Martin, Progne subis. 



Cliff Swallow, PetrocheUdon lunifrons. 

 Barn Swallow, Hirundo erythrogaster. 

 Tree Swallow, Iridoprocne bicolor. 

 Bank Swallow, Riparia riparia. 



The Waxwings hve chiefly on fruit and the Vireos chiefly on insects. All the 

 vireos are useful protectors of forest and fruit trees, as they are for the most part 

 arboreal, gleaning their food from the surfaces of the leaves and from the bark. 

 They are rather slow in their movements, not flitting about like the warblers. The 

 Red-Eyed Vireo is by far the most common species in this Province. 



The Warblers 



The warblers are small birds scarcely known except to the bird student, and 

 no greater pleasure awaits him in this study than making the acquaintance of these 

 briUiantly colored inhabitants of the woodland. They feed almost entirely on 

 insects, and thus only remain for a few summer months while insects are plentiful. 

 Many of them winter in South America. 



The majority capture their insect food flitting from branch to branch, some 

 capture their food on the wing, while a few feed on the ground. They destroy 

 immense quantities of the smaller insects. No better lesson on the value of these 

 birds as insect destroyers could be obtained than to watch them feeding for some 

 time. One observer estimates that a single warbler caught from forty to fifty 

 insects per minute, or three thousand in an hour. Their food includes also a 

 small number of useful parasitic wasps. Twenty-five species have been reported ' 

 from Quebec, of these fifteen are rather common. 



The Catbird, Galeoscoptes carohnensis, and the Brown Thrasher,Toxostoma 

 rufum, belong to the family that includes the wrens. Both of these birds live on 

 fruit *and insects, the thrasher is especially fond of the May-beetle. 



The Brown Creeper, Certhia famiharis americana, the Nuthatches and the 



Chickadees are gleaners of tree-trunk insects and their eggs. The eating of insect 



