124 
The Food of Birds. 
out the fairest side of the ripest early apples, unsur- 
passed in skill and industry at this employment by the 
red-headed woodpecker or the blue jay. 
At the bottom of the table of food given on page 127 a 
set of percentages will be seen similar to those previous- 
ly mentioned in the discussion of the food of the robin. 
The beneficial elements eaten by this bird, including 
fruits and the carnivorous insects, run as follows, from 
May to September : 13, 53, 75, 45 and 19, the average for 
the season being forty-one per cent. The corresponding 
ratios of injurious elements are 29, 21, 7, 16 and 4, giving 
a general average of 15 per cent, for the year. Referring 
to the vertical column of figures at the right of the table 
we find the injurious insects of this bird’s food as fol- 
lows : saw-flies one per cent., Lepidoptera seven, leaf- 
chafers two, snout-beetles one, plant-beetles one, chinch- 
bugs one and Orthoptera three; while the beneficial in- 
sects in the same column are — predaceous beetles five, 
predaceous Hemiptera one, and Arachnida two. A care- 
ful comparison of these elements with each other will 
probably convince the intelligent reader that these insect 
averages balance each other fairly well, and that the in- 
jury done in the fruit-garden by these birds remains 
without compensation unless we shall find it in the food 
of the young. This statement is made upon the hypoth- 
esis that ants are to be regarded as neutral insects ; and 
the entire question of the immediate value of this species, 
aside from the still unsettled question of the food of the 
young, may be reduced apparently to the following form : 
Will the destruction of a given quantity of ants pay for 
three times that quantity of the smaller garden fruits! 
