SONG BIRDS ‘OF ORCHARD AND WOODLAND. 211 
The food of these birds has been much discussed, and it 
has been clearly shown that they eat a larger proportion of 
fruit and a smaller proportion of insects than most birds. 
Here in Massachusetts they often merit the name of Cherry 
Birds, for they descend on the cherry trees in considerable 
flocks, and destroy a large quantity of fruit. Professor Beal, 
however, in examining one.hundred and fifty-two stomachs, 
found that only nine birds had eaten cultivated cherries, and 
that more than half the food consisted of wild fruit. 
Mrs. Mary Treat writes of a town in which the elms had 
been defoliated for several years by the elm-leaf beetle, but 
the Cedar Birds came, and 
the trees were afterwards 
comparatively free from the 
beetles. During the time 
when the adult birds feed on 
cherries, the young are fed 
very largely upon insects, 
although fruit is given them 
as they grow older. These 
birds feed so much on wild 
fruit as it ripens, that it con- 
stitutes nearly seventy-five 
per cent. of their food; but 
later, after the young are reared, they turn flycatchers, and 
taking a high perch on some tree near a lake or river or 
on the borders of the woods, they sally out after flying 
insects. Grasshoppers, beetles, crickets, ichneumon flies, 
crane flies, and lacewings are all devoured by them. Bugs 
and bark lice are also on the bill of fare. While these birds 
are sometimes a pest to the fruit grower, they are, on the 
whole, beneficial to agriculture, and deserve protection. 
Fig. '76.~— Good work in the orchard. 
TANAGERS. 
This group of brilliant woodland birds is represented here 
by but two species; one of these, the Summer Tanager, is 
very rarely seen; the common Scarlet Tanager is one of 
the most valuable birds of orchard and woodland. 
