No. 4.] BIRDS AND CATERPILLARS. 329 



The Wrens {Troglodytidoi) . 

 The house wren is the only species that has been seen by 

 our observers to eat hairy caterpillars. It can hardly be 

 called a common bird, and it has only occasionally been seen 

 to eat these caterpillars. 



The JSTuthatches and Titmice (J^aridce). 

 The chickadee, the common representative of the titmouse 

 family, and one of the most useful of all birds, is a great 

 destroyer of hairy caterpillars. Not only does it eat cater- 

 pillars of all sizes, feeding them to its young, but it destroys 

 all forms of these insects, except perhaps the eggs of some 

 species. Too much cannot be said in favor of this most 

 useful and harmless bird. Both species of the nuthatch take 

 these larvffi only as they come in their way on the trunks of 

 the trees, and not always even then. 



The Thrushes (Turdidm). 



While the thrushes -eat hairy caterpillars when they come 

 in their way, they do not, with the exception of the robin, 

 appear to search them out. The robin seems to be in this 

 way the most useful of all the thrushes. The wood thrush 

 and Wilson's thrush occasionally visit localities infested by 

 the caterpillars and eat a few, but the robin visits them fre- 

 quently and eats many. The thrushes eat mainly the larger 

 caterpillars. 



The bluebird is useful in destroying most forms of these 

 insects; but as bluebirds are not plentiful in the infested 

 region, the opportunity for observation has not been so good 

 as in the case of some other species. 



Birds observed feeding on Hairy Caterpillars. 



Yellow-billed cuckoo, 

 Black-billed cuckoo, 

 Hairy woodpecker, . 

 Downy woodiDecker, 

 Yellow-bellied sapsucker. 

 Flicker, .... 

 Kingbird, 

 Great-crested flycatcher 



Coccyzus americanus (Linn.). 

 Coccyziis erythrophthalmus (Wils.). 

 Dryobates villosus (Linn.). 

 Dryobates pubescejis (Linn.). 

 Sphyrapicus varius (Linn.). 

 Colaptes auratus (Linn.). 

 Tyrannus tyrannus (Linn.). 

 Myiarchus crinitus (Linn.). 



