UTILITY OF BIRDS. 71 



The American crow, though addicted to the same habits, is 

 made shy and timid by the persecution he suffers ; for our 

 farmers can never believe the crow is seeking after any tiling 

 but corn, of which, it has been well ascertained, he will eat 

 but a very small quantity, though it were placed constantly 

 before him. The same results might be obtained, however, by 

 encouraging other birds that seek this grub as their favorite 

 food. Such are the common crow blackbird or purple grackle, 

 one of the most useful of the farmer's friends, the red-winged 

 blackbird and the meadow lark. The robin takes vast quanti- 

 ties of cut-worms that do not lie so deep in the soil, but he 

 does not dig into the earth like the birds just named. The 

 most useful birds are those which are likewise the most mis- 

 chievous on certain occasions, the blackbirds by stealing corn, 

 and the robin by stealing cherries. One of our most useful 

 birds, among the smaller species, is the wax-wing, which, on 

 account of his ceaseless depredations in the cherry trees, is 

 known by the familiar name of the cherry bird. Prof. W. D. 

 Peck, in his " Prize Essay on the Natural History of the 

 Canker Worm," remarks : " The principal check provided by 

 nature upon the too great increase of this insect, is the Ampelis 

 Garrulus of Linnaeus, called by Mr. Catesby the Cliatterer of 

 Carolina, and in Rev. Dr. Belknap's History of New Hamp- 

 shire, the cherry bird. This bird destroys great numbers of 

 them, while in the larva state." 



Birds that eat fruit are observed to prefer insects, and to 

 resort to fruit only when insects are scarce or placed beyond 

 their reach. The author of " The Journal of a Naturalist," 

 says of the fieldfare, a bird resembling the American robin : 

 " In this county, (Gloucestershire,) the extensive low lands of 

 the river Severn, in open weather, are visited by prodigious 

 flocks of these birds ; but as soon as snow falls, or bad weather 

 comes on, they leave these marshy lands, because their insect 

 food is covered or Ijecome scarce, visit the uplands to feed on 

 the produce of the hedges ; and we see them all day long 

 passing over our heads, in large flights, on some distant 

 progress, in the same manner as our larks, at the commence- 

 ment of the snowy season, repair to the turnip-fields of Somerset 

 and Wiltshire. They remain about during the continuance of 

 these causes which incited their migration ; but as the frost 



