SONG BIRDS OF ORCHARD AND WOODLAND. 183 
May beetles, and other injurious species taken. The de- 
struction of the ground beetles eaten by the Catbird is prob- 
ably at the worst a necessary evil. It eats many caterpillars, 
including cutworms, also grasshoppers and crickets. Ants 
and crane flies formed a large proportion of the insect food of 
some Catbirds dissected by Professor Forbes, who says, how- 
ever, that in midsummer the Catbird subsists mainly on fruit, 
and only takes such insects as come its way. Young Cat- 
birds while.in the nest are fed very largely on insect food. 
Dr. Weed examined the stomach contents of three nestling 
Catbirds in Michigan, and found that ninety-five per cent. 
of the food consisted of insects, two per cent. of spiders, 
and three per cent. of myriapods. Sixty-two per cent. of 
this food was composed of cutworms, eleven per cent. of 
ground beetles, four per cent. of grasshoppers, three per 
cent. of May flies and two per cent. of dragon flies. Dr. 
Judd also found that the nestlings were fed almost entirely 
on insects. All these statements go to prove the value of 
the Catbird on the farm. : 
On the other hand, the adult Catbird often lives so largely 
on cultivated fruit in midsummer that were its numbers 
greatly increased it might become an unbearable pest to the 
fruit grower. Its destructiveness to small fruits varies, how- 
ever, in different localities. Sometimes the Catbird will 
leave its favorite thickets and build its nest in the raspberry 
or blackberry bushes, or among the grapevines in the garden. 
A pair of these birds that occupied a nest in our garden at 
Worcester where they were surrounded by fruit did no injury 
compared with that inflicted by a pair of Catbirds that nested 
in the shrubbery near our garden at Wareham. There I 
found that the Catbirds came to the garden mainly for straw- 
berries. They chose the best fruit, and seemed to live on 
that alone during the strawberry season. The Catbirds ate 
more fruit than the Robins, although the latter were far more 
numerous, and, as is usually the case, were blamed at first 
for the loss of all the fruit. 
While the Catbird is often a pest to the fruit garden, eat- 
ing, as it does, most small fruits, it is so useful in case of 
insect outbreaks that it deserves protection. Five Catbirds 
