PROCEEDINGS OF TWENTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 185 



mousers, as also is the great horned owl, which will, when chance 

 comes its way, take a roosting chicken out of the trees or bushes. 



The farmer and fruit-grower have not, as a rule, given the proper 

 attention to the observation of birds' habits, nor have they had access 

 to convenient information; but happily the times are changing, so that 

 our State agricultural stations are issuing important bulletins from 

 time to time. 



Of the many other birds that are related to the farmer may be 

 mentioned the meadowlarks and blackbirds, to which I will call your 

 attention at another time. 



What orchardist in this Convention has taken the time to spend an 

 hour, much less a day, among the birds of his orchard? Or did you 

 ever try to count all the birds seen, or ascertain the number of times a 

 parent bird carried insects to the gaping mouths of its young? These 

 seemingly small facts play a more important part in the life of our trees 

 than can be told in words. Take our little red-capped chipping sparrow^ 

 which builds its nest in your apple or pear tree; the parent birds will 

 make from fourteen to twenty feeding trips an hour to the nest, and in 

 some cases the animal matter counts up into ounces instead of grains^ 

 according to the demands of the young birds for food. 



In watching the work done by the warbling vireo, bush-tit, and the 

 goldfinches in picking the limbs and branches clean of spiders, larvae, 

 and scale we should realize that the work goes on the year round. 

 Kinglets, juncos, and warblers can be seen any day during the winter 

 cleaning the bare branches of scale. The little mouse-like bush-tit, of 

 plain gray color, moves in large flocks among the trees, feeding indus- 

 triously on the bark lice, spiders, and scales. Stomachs that have been 

 examined at the Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture 

 contained the black scale {Lecanium olese) from the California olive 

 groves. (See Yearbook for 1900, p. 296, " How Birds Affect the Orchard," 

 by F. E. L. Beal, B.S., Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.) 



Some birds found in our orchards, as the California brown towhee, 

 black-headed grosbeak. Brewer's blackbird, and Bullock's oriole, are 

 charged with the destruction of the fruit more or less in some localities — 

 a fact in common with our insectivorous birds, such as the small 

 thrushes. This could to a certain degree be remedied by the planting 

 of .a few trees of wild cherry, elderberry, or mulberry throughout the 

 orchard or along the fence lines, as all birds prefer wild fruit to domestic, 

 when obtainable. This will be noted where there are wild vines or 

 berry-producing shrubs and trees. I have often watched the thrushes, 

 robins, and even some of the smaller flycatchers feeding on the elder, 

 wild holl}^ or madrone fruits. 



Every few years there comes information relative to the vast numbers 

 of some bird sweeping dovv^n on the orchards, causing sometimes great 



