326 
OUR LARGEST STANDING ARMY: THE BIRDS. 
The Kingbird. 
birds were examined ; they had 
eaten fifteen per cent, of canker 
worms, ten per cent, of cutworms 
and other caterpillars, fourteen per 
cent, of ants and thirty-three per 
cent, of vine chafers. Four brown 
thrushes had eaten canker worms, 
vine chafers, June beetles, click 
beetles, ground beetles, and other 
insects. Combining these food ele- 
ments of twenty-seven members of 
the thrush family, Professor Forbes 
found that “ none of them had eaten 
any vegetation whatever”; that 
“ninety-six per cent, of their food 
consisted of insects (myriapods and 
earth-worms making up the remain- 
ing four per cent.) ; that sixteen per 
cent, were canker worms and only 
four per cent, predaceous beetles.” 
The vine chafer made just twenty- 
five per cent, of the entire food. 
The most important element in the 
food of five blue birds was the vine 
chafer (thirty-six per cent.), while 
canker worms formed twelve per 
cent. Two black-capped chickadees 
had eaten only canker worms and 
beetles, the former making sixty-one 
per cent, of the food, and the latter 
belonging principally to a 
wood-boring beetle of the 
genus Psenocerus. Nearly 
half the food of several house 
wrens consisted of canker 
worms. 
Passing now to the war- 
blers ( Mini atilt idie), we come 
to many species feeding very 
largely on canker worms. 
Four fifths of the food of a 
single Tennessee warbler con- 
sisted of these insects. Two 
thirds of that of five summer 
yellow birds was canker 
worms, and the same was 
true of two chestnut-sided warblers, 
and also of four black-pole warblers. 
A single black-throated green war- 
bler had eaten seventy per cent, of 
canker worms ; and two Maryland 
yellow throats had eaten forty per 
cent, of these and fort} 7 per cent, of 
other caterpillars. Consequently can- 
ker worms composed nearly or quite 
two thirds of the food of these fifteen 
warbles. 
Seventy-nine per cent, of the food 
of three warbling vireos consisted of 
caterpillars, more than half of them 
being canker worms. 
Out of a flock of about thirty cherry 
birds or cedar waxwings, seven birds 
were shot. With the exception of a 
few Aphodii (small beetles) eaten by 
three of the birds in numbers too in- 
significant to figure in the ratios the 
entire food of all these birds con- 
sisted of canker worms, which there- 
fore stand at an average of ioo per 
cent. The number in each stomach 
determined by actual count ranged 
from 70 to 101, and was usually 
nearly 100. Assuming that these 
constituted a whole day’s food, the 
thirty birds were destroying 3,000 
