they feed mostly on mice, squirrels, gophers, prairie dogs, and rabbits, as 

 well as on many harmful kinds of insects. 



Our Yellow-billed and Black-billed Cuckoos feed chiefly on hairy cater- 

 pillars and several other kinds of insects which they find lurkrhg among the 

 leaves of trees. Although considered among our shyer species, they even 

 come about our houses and venture into towns and cities for their favorite 

 insect food. 



There are few persons who will not admit that the woodpeckers as a family 

 are very useful birds. Feeding as they do, on the young of wood-boring 

 insects, they can do more relative good for the number of insects destroyed 

 than if they feed on such kinds as attack the leaves. A single.borer left undis- 

 turbed might kill a tree, while hundreds of leaf eaters of the same size would 

 scarcely be noticed if warning of their presence depended on the effect their feed- 

 ing had upon the appearance of the same tree. The commonest kinds of wood- 

 peckers in Nebraska are the Flicker, Red-headed, Downy, and Hairy, all of 

 which are often seen about our groves and orchards, where they carefully 

 hunt for borers and other harmful insects. 



Birds like the Whippoorwill, Nighthawk, and Chimney Swift eat nothing 

 but insects such as they catch in the air while flying about. The first two 

 are night fliers, while the other is one of our birds that flies and feeds during 

 daytime. 



The family to which the King-bird or Bee-bird belongs is also one that is 

 made up of insect eaters. They catch such kinds as flies, butterflies, moths , 

 beetles, and grasshoppers. The few bees eaten by the Bee-bird should not 

 count against the other members of the family, nor should we blame even the 

 bee-killer himself too much for the occasional rascal of his kind that prefers 

 to sit near a hive and catch drones and, rarely, a worker. 



Crows and their relatives, the magpies and jays, are sometimes called 

 rascals. Perhaps there is good reason in » number of cases for giving these 

 birds so bad a name; but we must not judge them too hastily, for sometimes 

 there are good deeds done even by the greatest of rascals. After finding out 

 what these deeds are, good and bad, we may think that enough good has been 

 done to at least give the "rascal" another chance. All of these birds eat 

 more insects, bulk for bulk, than they do of any other substance. The Blue 

 Jay does much of the mischief for which we blame the Robin, orioles, and 

 thrushes, and then sneaks away like a thief. He also robs the nests of our 

 smaller and weaker birds at times. To partly offset these mean traits he 

 destroys large numbers of injurious insects. 



The meadowlarks, orioles, and blackbirds are the most important destroyers 

 of such insect pests as attack field crops. They remain with us during the 

 whole year save for only a few months in the winter; gathering in large flocks, 

 as several kinds. do, they can wipe out an insect plague in a short time. The 

 large flocks of red-winged blackbirds which visit our cornfields do so to secure 

 the destructive ear-worm which abounds at that time of the year, and not 

 for the corn, as many of us suppose. Don't kill any of .these useful birds, 

 because they more than pay for the vegetable food "which they eat. 



Our sparrows and their relatives of the family Fringillidae form a very ex- 



