TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 87 



rial is not only going on through each day, but is continued through the 

 night by the owls, nighthawks, and poor-wills. Swallows and swifts 

 keep down the insect growth in air, while various species of flycatchers, 

 warblers, vireos, and hummingbirds are busy in and about the foliage. 

 Woodpeckers, nuthatches, titmice, and gnatcatchers are always busy 

 working over the limbs and tree-trunks, while innumerable varieties of 

 thrushes and sparrows are continually at work on the ground seeking 

 terrestrial insects as w T ell as worms and seeds. 



Birds digest their food so rapidly that it is difficult to determine just 

 how much they consume during a day's feeding. Mr. E. H. Forbush, of 

 the Board of Agriculture of Massachusetts, states that the stomachs of 

 four small chickadees contained 1,028 eggs of the cankerworm; the 

 stomachs of four others had about 600 eggs and 105 female moths of 

 the cankerworm in them. It was estimated that one chickadee feeding 

 for twenty-five days would destroy some 138,750 eggs of this noxious 

 worm — a phenomenal amount for so small a bird. 



Professor Forbes, Director of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural 

 History, found in the stomach of a single robin, 175 bibis (a fly), 

 which, in the larvse stage, feeds on the roots of grass. From a few facts 

 of this nature we can see what an economic factor the birds are, flitting 

 about our farms and orchards by day and night. Hawks and owls 

 especially, that are usually so condemned by the farmer and sportsmen 

 in general, are constantly protecting the crops by killing off thousands 

 of small rodents so destructive to grain and trees, and also by consum- 

 ing millions of grasshoppers in the fall of the year. In fact, many 

 species of hawks prey wholly on grasshoppers. 



Dr. A. K. Fisher, assistant of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, 

 found in the pellets cast up by a barn owl, that 200 contained 450 small 

 mammals, no less than 225 of these being skulls of the field and 

 meadow mice. Still we find that in many of our States a bounty 

 is offered for the heads of hawks and owls! The State of Pennsylvania 

 sustained a loss of nearly $4,000,000 in eighteen months from the killing 

 of over 100,000 of these birds. From my personal experience of one 

 nesting site in an old sycamore limb, along the edge of my orchard, I 

 took from a barn owl's nest five pocket gophers, two wood rats, three 

 small lizards, and two snakes. This was the food brought the young in 

 one night! I have only found two species of hawks to be harmful about 

 the habitations of man; of the owls, all are beneficial. 



As time rolls on and vast stretches of land come under cultivation, 

 we shall see the need of giving more attention to the study and protec- 

 tion of bird life, as the birds seek homes about our premises, to raise 

 their broods and render a valuable service in keeping in check millions 

 of noxious insect pests. It is stated as a fact by one of the leading 

 entomologists of the United States that insects alone cause an annual 



