190 SMALL ANIMALS AND INSECTS. [CniP. U. 



inside with mud, and lines with liay or fine grass. The eggs are from four 

 to six, bhiish green, unspotted. Tliey feed on worms, insects, fruit, and 

 berries, especially those of the sour gum-tree {dfi/ssa syivatlca). AV^hen 

 fat, the robin is in considerable esteem for the table. 



These birds are among our earliest songsters. Even in March, while the 

 snow yet mantles the fields and woodlands, he will mount a post or leafless 

 tree, and make an attempt at a song. 



They are ornamental to every farm, and should be encouraged to build 

 their nests in every garden. 



234. Birds Destroying Grasshoppers and Worms.— Last year, in the neigh- 

 borhood of Philadelphia, there was a swarming pest of grasshoppers. By- 

 and-by, when every one was at his wits' end to know what to do to get rid 

 of this scourge, there was a sudden appearance of immense flocks of plover, 

 which spread themselves over the fields, and devoured with avidity the 

 grasshoppers. Some of them have been shot to test the matter, and their 

 crops have been found full of grasshoppers. The ravages of the latter soon 

 cease wherever the flocks of plover appear, as the great number and voracity 

 of the birds render them more than a match for the insects. Up to this 

 visit of plover, the only relief from this calamity was the eagerness with which 

 the fowls devoured the grasshoppers. Turkeys, the most efficient adversaries 

 of these insects — because the largest and most active— have thriven wonder- 

 fully upon them. So have the ducks, geese, and chickens. . If farmers pre- 

 fer to be annually eaten up by insects, they will continue their insane war- 

 fare upon birds. On the contrary, let them be protected, and encouraged to 

 build their nests in the very windows of our dwellings, and see what myriads 

 of pests they will destroy ! 



In one of the years that I lived on the "Western prairies, there was an 

 irruption of greedy devourers of farm crops, known as the army worm, 

 coming from no one knows where, nor when to look for its march. It is 

 easy to trace it, however, after it has marched over a country, for it con- 

 sumes every leaf of grass and grain, wherever the army spreads itself. 



Farmers sometimes plow a deep furrow around a field as the army 

 approaches, and this furrow will soon fill up with worms, which are crushed 

 by a log drawn over them ; repeating the operation every day. This is 

 troublesome, and not always efiective. In the year alluded to, the army 

 approached just at the time it would be destructive to the wheat crop, and 

 the owners of tlie most exposed farms were in sore trouble at the prospect 

 before them. For two days they looked on in dread. " One more day," they 

 said, " and we shall be swept." One more day came, and with it one of man's 

 best friends, the worm-eating birds. Lookint: out southward where the 

 worms were at work on the jjrairio grass, a black cloud was seen hovering 

 close to the ground. It was a cloud of blackbirds, coming up from their 

 great nesting-place in the Kankakee marshes, to feed on the worms. They 

 saved the wheat crop. It is true that this variety of birds, when they come 

 in great flocks into the grain-fields, are pests, but not half as bad as wonns 



