140 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



and haunted the vines day after day, until the lice were so 

 reduced in numbers that they did no further injury. It 

 seems probable that this habit of the " chippy" is wide- 

 spread, for jNIr. II. W . Olds and Dr. Judd have both ob- 

 served it.* 



These birds apparently rendered it unnecessary for us to 

 protect our peas from these destructive aphides. How gen- 

 erall}^ they ma}'' have effected such a result elscAvhere I 

 have no means of knowing. It is quite probable that they 

 have borne a prominent part in reducing the pea louse from 

 a pest of the first class to its present status. These birds 

 fed on the eggs of the parsley butterfly (Pctpilio asferias)^ 

 taking most of them from the leaves of the celery or pars- 

 nip plants, where they are deposited by the insect, usually 

 one in a place. The chipping sparrow also feeds on the 

 3^oung larvfe. The attentions of the " chip birds " are not 

 by any means confined to the garden. They are ver}^ useful 

 in the orchard, particularly in the destruction of caterpillars, 

 upon which their young are largely fed. The}^ also feed in 

 the borders of woodlands, along the roadsides and in the 

 open fields. As these birds often raise two broods each sea- 

 son, and their 3"oung are nourished almost entirely on insects, 

 their great value to the farmer is unquestioned. In the illus- 

 tration from ^Ir. Reed's photographs the parents are seen 

 with their callow brood (Fig. 7). In the lower photograph, 

 the female, having brought a caterpillar too large to be fed 

 whole, is seen to join with the male in dividing it. 



The song sparrow is another bird Avhich has done excel- 

 lent service in the garden. A pair of these birds nested 

 near a ditch at the north side of the garden in 1901, where 

 they confined their attentions principally to the early cab- 

 l)age patch. Both cabbages and cauliflowers made a rank 

 growth, and by June had so covered the ground that these 

 creeping ground sparrows could readily pass beneath them 

 unobserved. Their habits in this respect are such as to 

 completely baffle the ordinary observer. Finally, after much 

 watching, they were seen to eat the cabbage plant louse 



* Bulletin No. 15, Division of Biological Survey, United States Department 

 of Agriculture, p. 77. 



