276 An American Fruit-Farm 



longest of all songsters, always lives in or near a 

 vineyard. A scarlet tanager has been seen to 

 devour at the rate of thirty-five gypsy-moths a 

 minute for eighteen minutes at a time. More than 

 fifty species of birds, nearly all of which would 

 frequent the Valley — and most other valleys also — 

 if we would let them, live on caterpillars and plant- 

 lice. A pair of robins will eat, on the average, all 

 summer long, two worms every minute and rear 

 several broods to do the same act. And do you 

 kill robins? You say the robin eats cherries. But 

 the worms destroy infinitely more. You pay out 

 money to spray your trees; the robins will do the 

 work for nothing. And the woodpeckers, one and 

 all, are worth their weight in gold. They do more 

 to protect a fruit-tree than any other bird. You 

 may see them, if you do not kill them, search- 

 ing over the tree bark, stem, leaf, bud, even the 

 blossoms and the fruit, devouring, not cherries, 

 peaches, plums, prunes, but bugs, lice, myriads of 

 lice. Of course we ought to shoot them and spray 

 the tree and ask Uncle Sam to maintain an experi- 

 ment station in our locality for our benefit! Is 

 not this the climax of folly? What if the fruit- 

 grower were to let the birds alone, make his estate 

 a bird preserve, and put up a sign, **Pothimters, 

 Take Warning!" 



A curious calculation as to the use of birds — ^and 

 one which must make a deep impression, if it be 

 considered at all — ^has been made by Kalbfus: 

 Each young bird in the nest daily consumes an 



