SONG BIBDS OF ORCHARD AND WOODLAND. 183 



May beetles, and other injurious species taken. The de- 

 struction of the ground beetles eaten by tlie Catbird is })rob- 

 ably at tlie worst a necessary evil. It eats many caterpillars, 

 including cutworms, also grasshoppers and crickets. Ants 

 and crane flies formed a large proportion of the insect food of 

 some Catbirds dissected by Professor Forbes, who says, how- 

 ever, that in midsummer the Catbird subsists mainly on fruit, 

 and only takes such insects as come its wa}^ Young Cat- 

 birds while in the nest are fed very largely on insect food. 

 Dr. Weed examined the stomach contents of three nestling 

 Catbirds in Michigan, and found that ninety-five per cent, 

 of the food consisted of insects, two per cent, of spiders, 

 and three per cent, of myriapods. Sixty-two per cent, of 

 this food was composed of cutworms, eleven per cent, of 

 ground beetles, four per cent, of grasshoppers, three per 

 cent, of May flies and two per cent, of dragon flies. Dr. 

 Judd also found that the nestlings were fed almost entirely 

 on insects. All these statements go to })rove the value of 

 the Catbird on the farm. 



On the other hand, the adult Catl)ird often lives so largely 

 on cultivated fruit in midsununer that were its numbers 

 greatly increased it might become an unbearable pest to the 

 fruit grower. Its destructiveness to small fruits varies, how- 

 ever, in diflcrent localities. Sometimes the Catbird will 

 leave its favorite thickets and l)uild its nest in the rasi)berry 

 or blackberry bushes, or among the grapevines in the garden. 

 A pair of these birds that occupied a nest in our garden at 

 Worcester where they were surrounded by fruit did no injury 

 compared with that inflicted by a })air of Catbirds that nested 

 in the shru})l)ery near our garden at Wareham. There I 

 found that the Catbirds came to the garden mainly for straw- 

 berries. They chose the best fruit, and seemed to live on 

 that alone during the strawberry season. The Catbirds ate 

 more fruit than the Robins, although the latter were far more 

 numerous, and, as is usually the case, were blamed at first 

 for the loss of all the fruit. 



While the Catbird is often a pest to the fruit garden, eat- 

 ing, as it does, most small fruits, it is so useful in case of 

 insect outbreaks that it deserves protection. Five Catbirds 



