230 



THE GYPSY MOTH. 



The chickadees became so tame that they would sometimes 

 alight upon his hat or coat sleeve. They would come like a 

 flock of chickens to be fed, and some would feed on limbs 

 within three feet of his face. Occasionally one would even 

 take food from his hand. In a short tioie chickadees, nut- 

 hatches, creepers and downy woodpeckers became so tame 

 that their feeding habits could be closely watched. Then 

 observations were begun. A downy woodpecker was seen 

 to strike an egg-cluster, scattering the eggs over the snow ; 

 yet the bird did not eat any of them. On close examination 

 it was seen that the eggs as well as some of the bark on 

 which they rested had been removed by the bird to get at 

 the larva of some insect which hajDpened to lie under this 

 bark. The birds which came to the bait on the infested trees 

 were there many times each day for about three months, yet 

 the eggs were seldom molested. During all this time, how- 

 ever, the birds were feeding daily on eggs and other hibernat- 

 ing forms of other injurious insects, of which they destroyed 

 large numbers. Thirty-eight visits were made in one after- 

 noon by birds to one tree on which were sixty-five gypsy 

 egg-clusters. The birds all came within three or four feet 

 of these eggs ; two of them even perched on egg-clusters, 

 but they did not eat or even notice the eggs. Whether the 

 result would have been the same had there been no meat for 

 them to feed on, we cannot say ; yet, as they were constantly 

 destroying the eggs of other insects, and as they occasionally 

 pecked the egg-clusters of the gyps}' moth but did not eat 

 the eggs, it is fair to assume that they will not do so unless 

 perhaps when driven to it by extreme hunger. As from 

 observations made on birds in confinement it seemed prob- 

 able that the hairs with which the egg-clusters are covered 

 were disagreeable to the birds, an experiment was made to 

 see if they would eat the eggs when the hair was removed. 

 For this purpose some hundreds of eggs denuded of hair 

 were glued upon a twig or stick in close proximit}' to the 

 meat. The birds attacked the bait as usual, but if they 

 ate any of the eggs it was not observed, although a few 

 were knocked or pecked off. They would not eat the eggs 

 even when they were cleaned of hair and distributed over 

 the meat. Ko birds were actualh^ seen to eat any of the 



