No. 4.] BIRDS AND WOODLANDS. 303 



are a serious evil, and florists have to combat them with in- 

 secticides and fumigation. The value of birds as aphis eaters 

 has been shown by confining them in greenhouses. E. A. 

 Samuels says that three full-grown rose bushes in a green- 

 house were infested by some 2,000 plant lice which were all 

 consumed in a few hours by a single titmouse.* Rndolphus 

 Bingham of Camden, N. J., states that he kept a winter 

 garden almost entirely free from plant lice, wasps and flies 

 l)y confining an indigo bird there. | He also kept a few 

 native sparrows in a greenhouse, and as a result the place 

 suftered very little from insect attacks. After the birds 

 had been introduced he found it 

 unnecessary to fumigate. These 

 experiments determine only that 

 birds will eat aphides when confined 

 with them ; but any one who Avill 

 watch the warblers and other small 

 birds in May among the birch or 

 other woods infested by aphides will 

 be convinced that they take vast 

 numbers from choice. My assist- 

 ant, Mr. F. H. Mosher, watched 

 a pair of Maryland yellow-throats fig.i.- chickadee hunting 

 eating plant lice from the birches 



in the Middlesex Fells reservation in Maiden, May 28, 181)8. 

 One of them ate 89 of these tiny insects in one minute, and 

 they continued eating at that rate for forty minutes. Mr. 

 Mosher states that they must have eaten considerably over 

 7,000 in that time. This seems hardly credible, but Mr. 

 Mosher is a very careful, painstaking and trustworthy wit- 

 ness, lie adds that the birds made several other visits to 

 the tree during the forenoon, and continued feeding as at 

 first. 



Caterpillars are among the worst enemies of trees, and 

 where they are numerous they form at least two-thirds of the 

 food of the warblers. Probably all woodland birds, from 

 hawks, crows and owls down to the tiny titmice, wrens and 



* Thirteenth annual report secretary Massacliusetts State IJoarcl of Agriculture, 

 1865, I). 94. 

 t Nineteenth annual report New Jersey State Board of Agriculture, 1891-92, p. 1G3. 



