VALUE OF BIRDS YO MAN. 5d 
have both the time and patience to watch the feeding of young 
birds for an entire day. Dr. C. M: Weed and Mr. W. F. 
Fiske, however, have accomplished this feat. They watched 
the nest of a Chipping Sparrow from 3.40 a.m. to 7.49 p.m. 
on June 22,1898. The valuable record of these observations 
Fig. 25.—Chipping Sparrow feeding young. 
shows that these two birds, having only three young in the 
nest, visited it at least one hundred and eighty-two times 
during that day; and Dr. Weed says that they made aimost 
two hundred trips, although some of the trips evidently were 
made to furnish grit for grinding the food. The birds were 
busy from daylight to dark, with no long intermission. The 
food, so far as identified, consisted largely of caterpillars. 
Crickets and crane flies were seen, and it was believed that 
a great variety of insect food was brought. ? 
A committee on useful birds, selected from the Pennsyl- 
vania State Board of Agriculture, reported that an observer 
had watched the nest of a pair of Martins for sixteen hours, 
from 4 a.m. until 8 p.m., to see how many visits the parent 
birds made to the young. One hundred and nineteen visits 
were made by the male and one hundred and ninety-three by 
the female.” 
‘1 The Feeding Habits of the Chipping Sparrow, by C. M. Weed. Bulletin 
No. 55, New Hampshire College Agricultural Experiment Station, 1898. 
? C. C. Musselman, in Agriculture of Pennsylvania, 1887, p. 105. 
