THE BIRD STUDY BOOK 



and each was found to contain on an average one 

 hundred and eighty-five eggs. This gives a total of 

 nearly twenty thousand cankerworm moth eggs de- 

 stroyed by four birds in a few minutes. The Chick- 

 adee is very fond of the eggs of this moth and hunts 

 them assiduously during the four weeks of the sum- 

 mer when the moths are laying them. 



The Nighthawk, which feeds mainly in the evening, 

 and which is equally at home in the pine barrens of 

 Florida, the prairies of Dakota, or the upper air of 

 New York City, is a slaughterer of insects of many 

 kinds. A Government agent collected one, in the 

 stomach of which were the remains of thirty-four 

 May beetles, the larvae of which are the white grubs 

 well known to farmers on account of their destruction 

 of potatoes and other vegetables. Several stomachs 

 have been found to contain fifty or more different 

 kinds of insects, and the number of individuals in some 

 cases run into the thousands. Nighthawks also eat 

 grasshoppers, potato-beetles, cucumber-beetles, boll- 

 weevils, leaf-hoppers, and numerous gnats and mos- 

 [io6] 



