Photo by Mrs. F. W. Roe 



BLUE JAYS (Stt PAGE 687) 



The blue jay, I fear, is a reprobate ; but, notwithstanding his fondness for eggs and 

 nestlings, and his evident joy in worrying other birds, there is a dashing, reckless air about 

 him which makes us pardon his faults and like him in spite of ourselves. Like many men, 

 he needs the inspiration of congenial company to bring out the social side of his disposition. 

 When at home he is ver}'- different from the noisy fellow who, with equally noisy comrades, 

 roams the woods in the fall. 



coursing rapidly to and fro, ever in pur- 

 suit of the insects, which constitute their 

 sole food. When they retire, the night- 

 hawks and whippoorwills will take up 

 the chase, catching moths and other noc- 

 turnal insects which would escape day- 

 flying birds. The flycatchers lie in wait, 

 darting from ambush at passing prey, 

 and with a suggestive click of the bill 

 returning to their post. 



The warblers — light, active creatures — ■ 

 flutter about the terminal foliage, and, 

 with almost the skill of a humming-bird, 

 pick insects from leaf or blossom. The 

 vireos patiently explore the under sides 

 of leaves and odd nooks and corners to 

 see that no skulker escapes. The wood- 

 peckers, nuthatches, and creepers attend 

 to the tree trunks and limbs, examining 

 carefully each inch of bark for insects' 

 eggs and larvae, or excavating for the 

 ants and borers they hear at work within. 



On the ground the hunt is continued 

 by the thrushes, sparrows, and other 

 birds, who 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. 



A CONSTANT WARFARE AGAINST INSECTS 



Birds digest their food so rapidly that 

 it is difficult to estimate from the con- 

 tents of a bird's stomach at a given time 

 how much it eats during the day. The 

 stomach of a yellow-billed cuckoo shot 

 at 6 o'clock in the morning contained the 

 partially digested remains of 43 tent cat- 

 erpillars, but how many it would have 

 eaten before night no one can say. 



Mr. E. H. Forbush, ornithologist of 

 the Board of x'Vgriculture of Massachu- 

 setts, states that the stomachs of four 

 chickadees contained 1,028 eggs of the 

 cankerworm. The stomachs of four other 

 birds of the same species contained about 

 600 eggs and 105 female moths of the 

 cankerworm. The average number of 

 eggs found in 20 of these moths was 185, 

 and, as it is estimated that a chickadee 

 may eat 30 female cankerworm moths 

 per day during the 25 days which these 

 moths crawl up trees, it follows that in 

 this period each chickadee would destroy 

 138,750 eggs of this noxious insect. 



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