8 BIRDS 



out hire, and during longer working hours than any trades- 

 union woidd allow. Thrushes, bluebirds, robins, mock- 

 ingbirds, orioles, catbirds, thrashers, wrens, and tanagers 

 — these and many others keep up a lively insect hunt 

 throughout a long sojourn among us, coming when the 

 first insects emerge in the spring and not wholly giving 

 up the chase until the last die or become dormant with the 

 coming of winter. "What could a little warbler do with 

 tent caterpillars, for example? But slim, large cuckoos.^ 

 glide among the leafy branches and count themsely^ 

 lucky to enter a neighborhood infested by them. The 

 sudden appearance of a new insect pest often attract 

 large numbers of birds not commonly seen in the neigh- 

 borhood. If dead or mutilated larvae of tent caterpillars 

 are seen near the torn tent it was probably opened by an 

 oriole, for the cuckoo does his work more thoroughly, leav- 

 ing no remains. The black-billed cuckoo has been an in- 

 valuable ally of the farmers in their herculean task of 

 destroying the gypsy moth, an alarming pest which, al- 

 though only recently introduced from Europe, has al- 

 ready laid waste large sections of New England. The 

 stomach of a single yellow-billed cuckoo examined con- 

 tained two hundred and seventeen fall web-worms! Hairs 

 have been considered a means of protection adopted by 

 many caterpillars. Most birds will not touch the hairy 

 kind. But cuckoos are not so fastidious. The walls of 

 their stomachs are sometimes as closely coated with hairs 

 as a gentleman's beaver hat. Caterpillars are also the 

 most important item on the Baltimore oriole's bill of fare, 

 of which eighty-three per cent, is insect food gleaned among 

 the foliage of trees. Cliclc beetles, which infest every kind 

 of cultivated plant, and their larvae, known as wireworms, 



