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The Food of Birds. 
Family SAXICOLIDLE. (The Stonechats\ 
Si ali a sialis, L. The Bluebird. 
This beautiful and beloved bird, endeared to the stu- 
dent of n autre by every particular of its plumage, song 
and way of life, is also one of the most popular of all 
birds with farmers and gardeners. Living under the eyes 
of men from the first yielding days of the later winter 
until the year grows chill and dark with the retreat of 
autumn, it has been praised most warmly for its tireless 
service of man by those who knew it best. A cursory ob- 
servation of its feeding habits will strongly support the 
general impression of its usefulness. Most frequently it 
takes a short, quick flight to the ground from a fence-post 
or a low branch of a tree, and, after a momenta pause, 
returns to its perch with a caterpillar or a grasshopper 
or some other insect in its beak, which it devours at its 
leisure, repeating this operation so frequently that none 
can doubt its enormous destructiveness to insect fife. 
It is true that a little reflection will suggest that, ><as it 
evidently sees its prey before it leaves its perch, it nmst 
usually take only the most conspicuous and the most ac- 
tive insects, and that there is no security that these will 
be the most injurious — that they may not be, in fact! 
among the most beneficial; but this consideration does\ 
not seem to have made any impression, and the bluebird 
remains to this day substantially without reproach. 
I have now examined carefully, with the microscope, 
the contents of one hundred and eight stomachs of this 
species, of which ten were taken in February, twenty- 
one in March, thirteen in April, nine in May, ten in June, 
nine in July, twelve in August, ten in September, two 
in October and twelve in December (in southern Illinois). 
I propose to present the data for each of these months ; 
to summarize them for the year; to estimate the benefit 
and injury indicated to farm and garden, and to make 
a comparison of the food of this bird with that of the 
robin, and of the thrushes generally. 
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