STATE POMOIvOGICAI, SOCIETY. 63 



care and tedious labor imposed upon the parents to procure it. 

 It is a fact established by observation and experiment that grow- 

 ing birds will consume a daily ration of meat equal to their own 

 weight. The stomach must be kept full of food during the day 

 to insure the fledglings' health and comfort. 



A young robin that fell from the nest was brought up by hand 

 and fed on angleworms. The man who reared him found him 

 always hungry, and to satisfy his curiosity resolved to fill up 

 that robin once. The bird ate that day fourteen measured feet 

 of fat, juicy, wriggling worms, and the next day was as hungry 

 as ever. Chas. Nash, author of "Birds of Quebec and Ontario," 

 fed 165 cutworms weighing together five and one-half ounces 

 to a young robin weighing only three ounces. A man weighing 

 150 pounds and eating at this rate would require 275 pounds of 

 beefsteak daily. 



Birds are in some respects the most highly specialized of the 

 animal kingdom. Their temperature is higher, and their respi- 

 ration more rapid than in man. The young of many birds are 

 born naked, yet under favorable conditions they develop as 

 rapidly as the insects on which they feed. Two different broods 

 of song sparrows were out of the nests in eight days. In this 

 incredible short space of time they had developed from naked, 

 bhnd, and helpless nestlings to full feathered, wide awake, and 

 active investigators of the insect conditions in their immediate 

 neighborhoods. Before they left the nests, each bird was 

 requiring one hundred caterpillars daily, and as the broods each 

 numbered five, one thousand caterpillars was the daily ration 

 eaten by the young birds, besides what the four adults con- 

 sumed. Consider for a moment the work done in one month 

 by these birds ; and when the second and third broods appeared, 

 90,000 caterpillars were deprived of ability to injure fruit trees 

 during every period of thirty days. I do not wonder that Mr. 

 Knowlton in assigning my subject put the insects first, the birds 

 next, and the fruit last. 



Our common yellow warbler is another bird which comes in 

 numbers from the South and makes its home in our orchards 

 and village streets. Almost entirely insectiverous, it feeds on 

 the greatest pests that attack our orchards and small fruits. 

 Caterpillars form two-thirds of its food, and while it is not 

 primarily adapted to a tree-trunk life exclusively, it is always 



