348 USEFUL BIRDS. 
cold storms in the breeding season. It is also one of the 
most purely insectivorous of all birds, and feeds almost en- 
tirely on winged insects. Therefore, when the air is cleared 
of flying insects by long, cold rains or hard frosts, it must 
starve. Its note is a full-toned chirruping carol, musical 
and clear, beginning peuo-peuo- 
peuo. It feeds largely on some of 
the greatest pests of the farm. 
Rose beetles and May beetles are 
caught in large numbers. John S. 
Russell writes that a quart of the 
wing cases and other rejecta of that 
Fig. 150.—Purple Martin, | common pest, the striped cucumber 
female. beetle, were taken from a hole in a 
Martin box; and Dr. Packard makes a similar statement. 
House flies and flies that trouble horses and cattle are taken 
in considerable numbers from the sides of houses and barns. 
Mr. Otto Widmann states, in “Forest and Stream,” that 
thirty-two parent Martins made three thousand, two hun- 
dred and seventy-seven visits to their young in one day, 
—June 27, 1884. 
Every effort should be made to induce these birds to again 
take up their abode throughout the State. 
