354 CONNECTICUT GEOL. AND NAT. HIST. SURVEY. [Bull. 



extent throughout the winter and early spring. Another com- 

 mon element of the food appears to consist of the curious fruits 

 of the bayberry or waxberry myrtle an abundant shrub along 

 the seacoast. In winter Chickadees have been observed to hide 

 away surplus food, to eat at a later time. 



" A careful study of the food of the Chickadee in Michigan 

 has also been made by Professor E. D. Sanderson, with results 

 very similar to those recorded above. As an indication of the 

 usefulness of these birds, he writes : 'If fifty-five insects were 

 consumed per day by each bird, as will be shown to be the case, 

 three hundred and eighty-five would be consumed per day by a 

 flock of seven, which is believed to be a fair average for each 

 square mile; this would be about one hundred and thirty-seven 

 thousand five hundred per year in each square mile. Thus upon 

 the land surface of Michigan there will annually be about eight 

 thousand million insects destroyed by Chickadees alone surely 

 no mean number/ " (Weed and Dearborn, " Birds in their Rela- 

 tion to Man.") 



Mr. Forbush reports that 1,028 eggs of the fall cankerworm 

 were found in the stomachs of four Chickadees killed in Massa- 

 chusetts, and that four others taken later in the season had eaten 

 105 female imagoes of the spring canker worm, each moth con- 

 taining on the average 185 eggs. " Mr. Bailey is very positive 

 from his continuous field observation, that each Chickadee will 

 devour on the average 30 female cankerworm moths per day 

 from the 2oth of March until the I5th of April, provided these 

 insects are plentiful. If the average number of eggs laid by each 

 female is 185, one Chickadee would thus destroy in one day 5,550 

 e ggs> and in the twenty-five days in which the cankerworm moths 

 ' run ' or crawl up the trees, 138,750. It may be thought that this 

 computation is excessive, and it is probable that some of the moths 

 were not captured until they had laid some of their eggs, but the 

 Chickadees are busy eating these eggs also. When we consider 

 further that 41 of these insects, distended as they were with eggs, 

 were found at one time in the stomach of one Chickadee, and 

 that the digestion of the bird is so rapid that its stomach was 

 probably filled many times daily, the estimate made by Mr. Bailey 

 seems a very conservative one. He now regards the Chickadee 

 as the best friend the farmer has, for the reason that it is with 



