176 



BIRDS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO MAN. 



quouce. It is recorded of an Iowa apiarist that he suspected 

 these birds of eating his bees and shot several near his hives, 

 but when examined by an expert entomologist no bees were 

 found in their stomachs. Of two hundred and eighty-one 

 stomachs opened by the Biological Survey, only fourteen 

 contained honey-bees, fifty in all, forty drones, four workers, 

 and six undetermined. The destruction of the drones was a 

 benefit, and the few workers were more than compensated 

 for by nineteen robber flies that had been eaten. Small 

 fruits, such as elder-berries, blackberries, and wild cherries, 



make up ten per 

 cent, of its food. 

 In southern Louisi- 

 ana it partakes of 

 berries of the prickly 

 ash and tobasco pep- 

 pers and is regarded 

 as a pest by pepper- 

 planters. This spicy 

 diet gives its flesh a 

 pungent flavor 

 which makes it 

 sought for the table, 

 and numbers are 

 annually killed for 

 market. The food 

 of the young kingbirds consists almost wholly of insects, 

 nearly half of it being crickets and grasshoppers when these 

 are abundant. 



The other common flycatchers the GREAT CRESTED, the 

 LEAST, and the WOOD PEWEE appear to have feeding habits 

 very similar to the phoebe and the kingbird, although, of 

 course, woodland species find insects of quite different sorts 

 from those in cultivated spaces. 



THE KINGBIRD. 

 (After Biological Survey.) 



