330 Bird - Lore 



There is a certain amount of feeling against the Catbird in some parts of 

 the country on account of the fruit and berries that he consumes. As a matter 

 of fact, however, fruit does not constitute a very large proportion of the 

 Catbird's yearly food. The reports of the Department of Agriculture show 

 that 44 per cent of its food consists of insects and three-fourths of this are 

 made up of ants, beetles, caterpillars, and grasshoppers. Of the 56 per cent 

 of vegetable food, only one-third consists of strawberries, raspberries and black- 

 berries, and many of these are the wild varieties. The other two-thirds are made 

 up of berries of the dogwood, wild cherry, sour gum, elder, greenbrier, spice- 

 wood, black alder, sumac, and poison ivy — plants of the shady swamps and 

 fence rows, where the Catbird so frequently makes his home. 



We see, therefore, that the Catbird is of enormous value to the farmer 

 as an insect-destroyer, while the charges against him as a fruit thief dwindle 

 in the light of scientific investigation and can be largely dismissed by a little 

 care in providing some of his favorite wild food. To quote Doctor Judd: 

 By killing the birds, their services as insect-destroyers would be lost forever, 

 so the problem for us is to keep both the bird and the fruit. We need have no 

 hesitancy in placing the Catbird fairly in the class of beneficial birds. When we 

 see him searching about the ground in his favorite thicket, we know that he 

 is seeking out the many harmful insects that lurk there, and we need not 

 begrudge him an occasional berry from the garden ; since, if he should become 

 a nuisance, we know how to draw him away from mischief. Considering the 

 amount of food that a farmer provides for his crops in the form of fertilizer 

 and manure, it seems strange if a little food cannot be provided for the birds, 

 without whose constant guardianship crops of all kinds would be utterly wiped 

 out by the insect hordes. Unfortunately, Catbirds seem to have become 

 scarcer than formerly about our gardens and dooryards, due, I think, to the 

 tendency toward that form of modern gardening which demands close-cropped 

 lawns and well-trimmed shrubbery, with no layers of dead leaves among which 

 wild birds may scratch, or tangles wherein they may build their nests. 



Let us bear in mind the needs of the Catbird when we care for our grounds, 

 and leave him a corner in which he may find a shady thicket sufficiently dense 

 to be congenial. It would be to me a poor garden indeed that did not have 

 some retreat from which I could hear that harsh complaining cry of the Cat- 

 bird, when I chanced to stroll by. Every bird note brings back to us some 

 association, some memory of the past, and with the cry of the Catbird there 

 comes before my mind's eye the old garden with which, as a boy, I was so 

 familiar. I see the thicket of lilacs and mock-oranges, and the gooseberry 

 bushes bordering the path, the spreading boughs of the apple trees with the 

 sunlight filtering through ; the smell of ripening fruit is in the air, and the still- 

 ness of a quiet summer afternoon is broken only by the hum of insects and the 

 complaining voice of the Catbird from his shady retreat. 



