96 THE OOLOGIST 
the interesting information Dr. 
Thomas §8. Roberts, student of orni- 
tholegy, gave before the members of 
the Woman’s club of Minneapolis at 
its meeting in the Handicraft Guild 
hall yesterday. The topic of his lec- 
ture was “Birds in Minnesota,” and a 
hall thronged to the very doors was 
testimony that the club women are 
much interested in birds. 
Dr. Roberts divided the feathered in- 
habitants of the state into classes, as 
thirty-one permanent, 184 summer res- 
idents, forty-one migrant species, eigh- 
teen that come purposely to enjoy the 
cool, bracing Minnesota winter, forty- 
nine are regular winter species; fif- 
teen species which are purely ‘“acci- 
dental” winter birds, all of which, with 
the “accidentals,” and “the during the 
winter onlys”’ and the occasional vis- 
itors, make a total of seventy-one win- 
ter birds. 
Dr. Roberts made free use of stere- 
opticon views, which gave a precise 
idea of the life the Minnesota birds 
live. The audience came face to face 
with the humorist, the useful bird, the 
destructive bird, the sponge, like the 
cowbird, that lays her eggs in the nest 
of any other bird and thus shifts the 
responsibility of feeding and raising 
her young to foster parents, who in 
turn faithfully take up the obligation 
even long after the birds are twice 
their size. The cowhbird is the only 
Minnesota bird, however, that acts 
thus, even the Minnesota cuckoo has 
more pride and, contrary to the En- 
glish cuckoo, raises its own young, al- 
though it does not build a nest and 
just drops its eggs on plain earth. 
Minnesota even has gulls, the rosy 
Franklin gull, which differs from the 
seagull in that it nests inland. The 
hawk belongs to the destructive birds, 
and to its ferocious disposition and de- 
sire for bird food is due the fact that 
the grouse has become almost extinct 
in Minnesota. 
Another destructive bird is the cher- 
ry bird, that finds its chief delight in 
destroying the cherry and other fruit 
blossoms and thus impairing the crop. 
Among the woodpeckers but one is to 
be classed among the destructive 
birds, the sap sucker, which lives on 
the sap of young trees and feeds its 
young on it and is thus responsible 
for the killing of many a slender ash 
and maple. Otherwise the woodpeck- 
ers are a useful lot, as they belong to 
the species with the sticky tongues 
that pick up ants and destroy ant hills 
under trees for a living. Others have 
a tongue built like a long pliable nee- 
dle that just picks up worms or other 
harmful insects. 
The blackbird, the special enemy of 
the agriculturist, was not forgotten on 
the list of destructive ones, for it’s the 
black birds that destroys acres and 
acres of corn just by ripping open the 
protective silk tissues that cover the 
ears, and by picking out carefully the 
heart of that kernel. 
Dr. Thomas illustrated interestingly 
the nest of the birds, and the ingen- 
ious way in which they build to pro- 
tect them in every possible way from 
the casual prowler and observer, the 
number of eggs laid by different spe- 
cies, which in some cases is not more 
than one, while other species, like 
the quail, have nests with as many as 
sixteen and more. The peculiarities 
of the rubythroat humming bird, the 
yellow warbler, the flickers, and all 
the other 298 varieties were pointed 
out in the brightly colored illustra- 
tions thrown on the screen. 
After the meeting the Japanese 
prints done by Mrs. Bertha Lum were 
viewed and tea hour followed. 
