How to Attract the Birds 



houses, night-hawks and whippoorwills through the 

 open country, all plying the air for hours at a time. 

 Some, which fly with their mouths open, need not 

 pause a moment for refreshments. 



On distended upper branches, preferably dead 

 ones, on fence rails, posts, roofs, gables and other 

 points of vantage where no foliage can impede their 

 aerial sallies, sit kingbirds, pewees, phoebes, and 

 kindred dusky, inconspicuous flycatchers, ready to 

 launch off into the air the second an insect heaves in 

 sight, snap it up with the click of a satisfied beak, 

 then return to their favorite look-out and patiently 

 wait for another. This class of birds keeps down the 

 larger flying insects. For generations the kingbird 

 has been condemned as a destroyer of bees. Rigid 

 investigation proves that he eats very few indeed, and 

 those mostly drones. On the contrary, he destroys 

 immense numbers of robber-flies or bee-killers, one 

 of the worst enemies the bee farmer has. The mere 

 fact that the kingbird has been seen so commonly 

 around apiaries was counted sufficient circumstantial 

 evidence to condemn him in this land of liberty. 

 But after a fair trial it was found that ninety per 

 cent of his food consists of insects chiefly injurious : 

 robber-flies, horse-flies, rose chafers, clover weevils, 

 grasshoppers, and orchard beetles among others. 



THE CARE OF FOLIAGE 



To such birds as haunt the terminal twigs of trees 

 and shrubbery the warbler tribe and the vireos, 

 chiefly was assigned the duty of cleaning the foliage 

 on the ends of the branches, where many kinds of 



