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NATURE’S MEANS OF LIMITING THE NUMBERS OF INSECTS. 273 
pecker the summer yellow bird, Maryland yellow throat, -the 
blue-bird. The bluejay eat their eggs in the winter, so does the 
chickadee. The latter eats their grub also and the worm too. 
The on gray creeper, which is with us only in the winter, 
eats the e 
Last enek I had a nest of golden-winged woodpeckers breed- 
‘ing on my place at Hingham. Some of them dug into my barn and 
passed the winter. Only a part of. my trees were protected b a 
this winter very few grubs have as yet shown themselyes, an 
give my friend Colaptes auratus the credit of all this. I know 
_ this—I gave the young ones a lot of the worms myself and they — 
eat them as if they were used to them. The old birds were too 
shy to permit me to see by their good deeds. 
I think the golden robin feeds its young with them so long as 
they last, but I am not sure that they eat the tent caterpillar. I 
nearly forgot the two cuckoos, yellow-bill and black-bill. a 
eat every form of caterpillar, canker worms included. do 
think the robin feeds any to its young, because it would never des ; 
they are too small and its brood want a big lot. I have known 
the robin to feed its young for moga gs das as fast as they could 
bring them, with the moth of the cut-worm. That is about as 
_Tnuch as we could expect of any bird 4 do at one time. At the 
rate they went, they must have caught and given their young ones 
about five hundred of these moths ina day. Before that, I had 
supposed the robin did me more harm than good, but I had to give 
in. My indebtedness to that pair was worth all the cherries I could 
raise in many years. So the robin and I are fast friends.” 
From the facts already presented, it may be inferred bow useful 
birds may become in the work of reducing the number of injuri- 
ous insects. Undoubtedly we have suffered greatly by our wanton 
- killing of the smaller birds. We are far behind European na- 
tions in caring for the insect-eating birds, and providing nests 
for them about our houses and gardens. The Swiss and French, 
have been the most far-sighted in this matter of the protection of 
the smaller insectivorous species. ‘The English, Scandinavians and 
Germans foster them, while in our country, teeming as it is with 
hosts of ravaging insects, the smaller birds are hunted and perse- 
cuted, or if let alone, there is no effort made on any extended scale 
to invite them to our houses and gardens. ` 
In this connection I may re fer to the barbarous and thoughtléss 
Custom of our young men, in the autumn, organizing in companies 
and shooting small quadrupeds and birds. These hunting parties 
destroy large numbers of raccoons, sai skunks, mink, weasels. 
AMER. NATURALIST, VOL. VII. 
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