12 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



course if he takes a fancy to your blossoming trees, you may as 

 well drive him off, for he has hundreds of useless wild or half- 

 wild trees to go to. 



The red-winged blackbird of the bushy swamp and overflowed 

 meadow, is everywhere characteristic. His "tchuck!" and 

 "gurglee!" are familiar to everybody. Redwings, with the robin 

 and crow blackbird, repair to the ploughed land as soon as they 

 come and these birds rid the soil of an incalculable number of 

 noxious insect-grubs before the sowing. The dissector brings no 

 bad record against this bird, and the cultivator who shoots them 

 is very short-sighted, as regards his own interests. Indeed, to sum 

 up this matter, a bird should never be shot because he sometimes 

 offends. If he makes himself a nuisance for a week, or even a fort- 

 night, he is making himself useful (although it may not be, indeed, in 

 your particular neighborhood,) for the rest of the year. So that 

 to grudge a bird an ear of corn is ill-treating the unpaid little 

 workman, who made the crop possible. You ca7i keep birds away 

 from your crops, but to battle with the insect host is beyond all 

 human ingenuity. 



The golden winged woodpecker's resounding reveille came 

 ringing over the countryside from the still leafless woods. This 

 large, gaily marked woodpecker is known to every man or boy 

 who has ever carried a gun. Alas, that this should be so ! for 

 here we have a truly famous eater of grubs and insects, gleaned 

 from the soil as well as from the bark of trees. Farmers are 

 often their own enemies, and never more certainly so than when 

 they shoot for sport as they do, law or no law, "one er them air 

 yaller hahmers," as they call them down in Maine. It is true, I 

 suppose, that one woodpecker, the yellow-bellied sapsucker, 

 decorates trees with those admirably even rows of holes, not for 

 insects within the bark, but for the sap, the life-blood of the tree. 

 But he doesn't spend all his time doing this, and he is now, in 

 most localities, rare enough to cause regret to the bird-lover, and 

 satisfaction to the forester. 



The robin was the last of the spring birds treated. He is 

 certainly fond of such dainty fruits as strawberries and cherries ; 

 but lie has helped protect them from worse enemies. To shoot all 

 the robins would be a dangerous exi)eriment. F'rom the economie 

 point of view alone, no bird would be more missed. 



