MASON AND LEFBOY. 163 



Putting these results with the first lot summarised we have 



Of 376 insects taken by 43 birds, 300 are beneficial, 53 injurious, 

 and 23 neutral. Forty-two birds took beneficial insects, 17 

 injurious, and 7 neutral. 



Conclusion. Though generally regarded as beneficial " because 

 it is insectivorous" the notes and records of the stomach con- 

 tents made at Pusa during the last 2i years certainly show it 

 to be injurious. This may have local application only, but it is 

 injurious here at Pusa, and in similar districts. Should bee-keeping 

 ever be taken up commercially in the plains, and there seems 

 every chance that such will be the case, this bird will prove one 

 of the worst pests to the bee-keeper. 



T believe, however, that the food of this species is not suffi- 

 ciently known. From watching birds feeding they apparently 

 take many more small insects than these records denote ; such 

 insects probably consist of a variety of small moths and flies ; 

 small beetles perhaps are taken to a greater extent than any other 

 form of food. 



A common resident though not so common during May to 

 August or December and January as during other months. This 

 Bee-eater is purely insectivorous and may be seen singly or in 

 small parties waiting on trees, posts, telegraph wires and even 

 lumps of earth in the middle of fields and swooping at insects as 

 they fly by. It does not remain so long on the wing as M. philip- 

 pinus. 



Its food consists principally of bees and other Hymenoptera, 

 small beetles especially Myllocerus sp. moths, crickets, &c. Moths 

 of various sorts, Noctuids and Pyralids, one of which was Ancyl- 

 lolomia chrysographella, have, on several occasions, been seen to 

 be taken, but beirg soft insects they are, as a rule, impossible to 

 identify in contents of stomach, especially as larger insects at any 

 rate are battered about a good deal before being eaten. If a Bee- 

 eater captures a fairly large insect or one that can sting, it in- 

 variably kills it by striking the lower mandible on its perch and 

 in so doing often breaks the insect. 



