SONG BIRDS OF ORCHARD AND WOODLAND. 175 
Professor King in Wisconsin found beetles, including 
snap beetles and boring beetles, in the stomachs of fourteen 
birds of the species. In Massachusetts it feeds largely on 
beetles, taking many that bore in the bark or wood. It also 
feeds on the eggs of insects, and on hibernating larve and 
ants. Scale insects are taken 
in winter. The oyster-shell 
bark scale louse (Lepidosa- 
phes ulmz), injurious to the 
apple, pear, currant, and 
other useful plants and trees, 
is eaten greedily. The pro- 
portion of insect food in- 
creases as spring advances, 
and the young are fed largely 
if not entirely on insects. ; 
On Nov. 26, 1897, Mr. Kirk- Fig. 56.—Wood-boring beetle, much en- 
land examined the stomach larged. Nuthatches eat such beetles. 
of one of these birds, which contained one thousand, six 
hundred and twenty-nine eggs of the fall cankerworm moth. 
As there were no moth remains, it was evident that the bird 
had gathered these eggs from the bark. 
One day Mr. Bailey watched a pair of these Nuthatches 
in Brookline. The birds went regularly from tree to tree, 
searching beneath the burlap bands for gipsy caterpillars, 
which for several hours they carried continually and fed to 
their full-fledged young. The young birds also found and 
killeda few. The preference shown by these particular birds 
for the hairy gipsy caterpillars at this place seems remark- 
able, as there were comparatively few of these larve to be 
found there at the time. 
This Nuthatch has been seen to eat cankerworms, forest 
caterpillars, and plant lice, and there is no doubt that ordi- 
narily it is a valuable species while here. 
