SONG- BIRDS OF ORCHARD AND WOODLAND. 211 



The food of these birds has been much discussed, and it 

 has been clearly shown that they eat a larger proportion of 

 fruit and a smaller proportion of insects than most birds. 

 Here in Massachusetts they often merit the name of Cherry 

 Birds, for they descend on the cherry trees in considerable 

 flocks, and destroy a large quantity of fruit. Professor Beal, 

 however, in examining one hundred and fifty-two stomachs, 

 found that only nine birds had eaten cultivated cherries, and 

 that more than half the food consisted of wild fruit. 



Mrs. Marv Treat writes of a town in which the elms had 

 been defoliated for several years by the elm-leaf beetle, but 

 the Cedar Birds came, and 

 the trees were afterwards 

 comparatively free from the 

 beetles. During the time 

 when the adult birds feed on 

 cherries, the young are fed 

 very largely upon insects, 

 although fruit is given them 

 as they grow older. These 

 birds feed so much on wild 

 fruit as it ripens, that it con- 

 stitutes nearly seventy-five 

 per cent, of their food ; but 



Fig. 76. Good work in the orchard. 



later, after the young are reared, they turn flycatchers, and 

 taking a high perch on some tree near a lake or river or 

 on the borders of the woods, they sally out after flying 

 insects. Grasshoppers, beetles, crickets, ichneumon flies, 

 crane flies, and lacewings are all devoured by them. Bugs 

 and bark lice are also on the bill of fare. While these birds 

 are sometimes a pest to the fruit grower, they are, on the 

 whole, beneficial to agriculture, and deserve protection. 



TANAGERS. 



This group of brilliant woodland birds is represented here 

 by but two species ; one of these, the Summer Tanager, is 

 very rarely seen ; the common Scarlet Tanager is one of 

 the most valuable birds of orchard and woodland. 



