INSECTS OF THE GARDEN 187 



quickly and emerge in two or three weeks, about the 

 middle of July, and, greatly increased in numbers, lay 

 the second brood of eggs, generally on the late apples. 

 Many of this brood are barreled with the apples, and 

 the rest escape from windfalls and discarded fruit and 

 return to the tree trunks for the winter. 



The final topics for study are the habits of the moth in 

 relation to its natural enemies. It will be found to be 

 nocturnal. Its color, as it hides on the apple bark, ren- 

 ders it almost invisible even to the sharp eye of a bird. 

 Taking refuge thus in the darkness, it escapes the day birds, 

 and we have no evidence that any of our insectivorous 

 night birds feed upon it. But we have one misunderstood 

 and wrongly despised little nocturnal animal, the bat, 

 which Koebele, in California, has actually observed in 

 the role of ''a. most efficient destroyer of this insect."^ 

 Should children make similar observations, they would 

 not kill every bat they find. Finally, what birds prey 

 upon the codling moth ? We shall discuss in a subse- 

 quent chapter what we may do to increase the numbers 

 of such birds about our homes. ^ 



The Peach-Tree Borer, Sanninoidea exitiosa. — ** We sup- 

 pose that few of the peach trees which have been planted 



1 Koebele writes : " Every night during June as many as six of these 

 bats were to be seen flying around an isolated apple tree upon which there 

 were a large number of the moths, not only taking the codling moth on the 

 wing, but very often darting at a leaf to get the resting moth." 



2 Refer to Bulletin 142, Cornell University Agricultural Experiment 

 Station, Ithaca, N.Y., "The Codling Moth," by M. V. Slingerland, 189S,— 

 the best source of information on- the subject. The birds mentioned as 

 eating the codling moth are downy woodpecker, nuthatch, bluebird, crow 

 blackbird, kingbird, swallows, sparrows, wrens, chickadees, and jays. 



