200 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



Great Britain.^ Of this order also is the bee-cuckoo (Cuculus indicator), 

 so celebrated for its instinct, by which it serves as a guiae to the wild bees' 

 nests in Africa. Sparrman describes this bird, which is somewhat larger 

 than a common sparrow, as giving this information in a singular manner. 

 In the evening and morning, which are its meal-times, it excites the atten- 

 tion of the Hottentots, colonists, and honey-raiel, by the cry of cherr, cherr, 

 cherr, and conducts them to the tree or spot in which the bees' nest is 

 concealed, continually repeating this cry. When arrived at the spot, it 

 hovers over it; and then alighting on some neighboring tree or bush, 

 sits in silence, expecting to come in for its share of the spoil, which is that 

 part of the comb containing the brood.^ The wryneck and the wood- 

 peckers, the nuthatch and tree-creeper, live entirely upon insects and their 

 eggs^, which they pick out of decayed trees, and out of the bark of living 

 ones. The former also frequents grass-plats and ant-hill, into which it 

 darts its long flexible tongue, and so draws out its prey. The wood- 

 pecker likewise draws insects out of their holes by means of the same 

 organ, which for this purpose is bony at the end and barbed, and furnished 

 with a curious apparatus of muscles to enable them to throw it forward 

 with great force. Some species spit the insects on their tongue, and thus 

 bring them into their month. In America, the tree-creeper is furnished 

 with a box at the end of a long pole to entice it to build in gardens, which 

 it is found to be particularly useful in clearing from noxious insects. 



Amongst the Grallce or Waders, many of the long-billed birds eat the 

 larvae of insects as well as worms ; and they form also no inconsiderable 

 part of the food of our domestic poultry, especially turkeys, which may 

 be daily seen busily engaged in hunting for them, and, as well as ducks, 

 will greedily devour the larger insects, as cockchafers, and in North 

 America Cicadce. Mr. Sheppard was much amused, one day in July, with 

 observing a cow which had taken refuge in a pond, probably from the gad- 

 fly, and was standing nearly up to its belly in water. A fleet of ducks 

 surrounded it, which kept continually jumping at the flies that alighted 

 upon it. The cow, as if sensible of the service they were rendering her, 

 stood perfectly still, though assailed and pecked on all sides by them. 

 The partridge takes her young brood to an ant-hill, where they feast upon 

 the larvae and pupae, which Svvammerdam informs us were sold at market 

 in his time to feed various kinds of birds."* Dr. Clarke also mentions 

 having seen them, as well as the ants themselves, exposed to sale in the 

 market at Moscow as a food for nightingales.^ Latrcille tells us that 

 singing birds are fed in France with the larvae of the horse-ant (^Formica 

 rufa). 



But the Linnean order of Passcres aflbrds the greatest number of 

 insectivorous birds; indeed, almost all the species of this order, except 

 perhaps the pigeon tribe, and the cross-bill and other Loxia^, more or less 

 eat insects. Amongst the thrush tribe, the blackbird, though he will have 

 his share of our gooseberries and currants, assist greatly in clearing our 

 gardens of caterpillars; and the locust-eating thrush is still more useful in 

 the countries subject to that dreadful pest: these birds never appear but 



» Bingley, ii. 287—290. » Sparrman, ii. 186. 



» Bewick's Birds, i. Pref. xiii. 130. 



* Bib. Nat. i. 126. b. • TraveU, i. 110. 



