288 ENTOMOLOGY 



grasshoppers, and leafhoppers." The honey bees eaten by 

 this bird are insignificant in number. Woodpeckers destroy 

 immense numbers of wood-boring larvae, bark-insects, ants, 

 caterpillars, etc. The cuckoos " are unique in having a taste 

 for insects that other birds reject. Most birds are ready to 

 devour a smooth caterpillar that comes in their way, but they 

 leave the hairy varieties severely alone. The cuckoos, how- 

 ever, make a specialty of devouring such unpalatable crea- 

 tures ; even stink-bugs and the poisonous spiny larvae of the lo 

 moth are freely taken." Caterpillars form fifty per cent, of 

 the food for the year; Orthoptera (grasshoppers, katydids, 

 and tree crickets), thirty per cent. ; Coleoptera and Hemiptera, 

 six per cent, each ; and flies and ants are taken in small quanti- 

 ties. " The nestling birds are fed chiefly with smooth cater- 

 pillars and grasshoppers, their stomachs probably being unable 

 to endure the hairy caterpillars. All in all, the cuckoos are of 

 the highest economic value. They do no harm and accom- 

 plish great good. If the orchardist could colonize his or- 

 chards with them, he would escape much loss." The quail 

 feeds largely upon insects during the summer, frequently eat- 

 ing the Colorado potato beetle and the army worm ; the prairie 

 hen has similar food habits but lives almost exclusively on 

 grasshoppers, when these are abundant. 



The Insect Food of Birds. " There are few groups of 

 injurious insects that enter so largely into the composition of 

 the food of birds as do the locusts, or short-horned grasshop- 

 pers, of the family Acridiidae. The enormous destructive 

 power of these insects is well known, but our indebtedness to 

 birds in checking their oscillations is less generally recog- 

 nized." Professor Aughey, who has made extensive studies 

 upon the relation of birds to the Rocky Mountain locust, 

 found that upon one occasion 6 robins had eaten 265 of these 

 insects, 5 catbirds 152, 3 bluebirds 67, 7 barn swallows 139, 7 

 night hawks 348, 16 yellow-billed cuckoos 416, 8 flickers 252, 

 8 screech owls 219, and i humming bird 4; while crows and 

 blue- jays had eaten large numbers of the locusts ; and grouse, 



