BIRDS 85 



terminal foliage, and with almost the skill of a humming 

 bird, pick insects from the leaf or blossom. The vireos 

 patiently explore the underside of leaves and odd nooks and 

 corners to see that no skulker escapes. The woodpeckers 

 (Fig. 66), nuthatches, and creepers attend to the trunks and 

 limbs, examining carefully each inch of bark for insects' 

 eggs, and larvae, or excavating for the ants and borers they 

 hear within. On the ground the hunt is continued by the 

 thrushes (Fig. 68), sparrows (Fig. 70), and other birds that 

 feed upon the innumerable forms of terrestrial insects. Few 

 places in which insects exist are neglected; even some 

 species which pass their earlier stages or entire lives in the 

 water are preyed upon by aquatic birds." 1 From CHAP- 

 MAN'S " Bird Life." 



As examples of the number of insects destroyed by in- 

 dividual birds we may give the following: Six robins in 

 Nebraska ate 265 Rocky Mountain locusts ; the stomachs 

 of four chickadees contained 1028 eggs of cankerworms ; 

 101 potato beetles were found in the stomach of a single 

 quail (Fig. 62) ; and 250 hairy caterpillars, which other 

 birds do not eat, were devoured by a yellow-billed cuckoo. 

 (Frontispiece.) 



68. Birds as destroyers of weed seeds. Another way 

 in which birds are useful to man is in the destruction of weed 

 seeds. Most perching birds that feed largely upon seeds, 

 e.g. the sparrows and finches, have stout, conical bills (Fig. 

 70) which are specially adapted for crushing seeds. In one 

 of the pamphlets of the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, entitled " Some Common Birds and their Relation 



1 Before assigning this section for study each of the birds named 

 should if possible be shown to the class, or at least colored pictures 

 of the birds, e.g. in Chapman's "Bird Life." 



