348 



NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



The first class includes those that are wholly or almost 

 wholly insectivorous : the swallows and martins, wrens, 

 vireos, flycatchers, warblers, cuckoos, night hawks, whip- 

 poor-wills, swifts, and humming birds. We cannot have 

 too many of these birds. All they need is safe homes and 

 water, and they should be encouraged and protected up 

 to the very limit of insect food. We should not attempt 



Fig. 138. Q. E. D. 

 A wild robin tamed to come at call by means of a few meal worms. 

 (Photograph by the author, 1901) 



to keep one in confinement for any length of time unless 

 we have an enormous supply of suitable insects, and 

 even then, with some of them, their manner of snapping 

 insects on the wing is so different from that of picking 

 them up from the ground that we could hardly expect to 

 feed them adequately or give them sufficient freedom for 

 health. Those birds, however, that do not catch their 

 food on the wing, such as the wrens, vireos, warblers, 



