8 
other insects. Ihe catbird in the central states is more complained against than any 
other bird and not without reason, but along the sea-coast it is considered j^urely 
beneficial. 
Ihe well known meadowlark is a bird of the field and so does not much affect 
horticulture directly; seventy-three per cent of its food is animal and twenty-seven 
vegetable, nearly all of the latter being the seeds of weeds. A careful estimate of its 
value as a destroyer of grasshoppers shows that on this account alone each meadow¬ 
lark is worth $1.20 per year to the farmer. 
Our beautiful oriole or firebird has been indicted as a destroyer of fruit, 
especially grapes; investigations seem to show that these accusations are mostly 
unfounded. In the stomachs examined were occasionally a few raspberries, rarely 
any other fruit, and, strange to say, no trace of grapes. Of its food eighty-three per 
cent is insects, mostly injurious species, no less than thirty-four per cent being cater¬ 
pillars. Ihe oriole is a bird of the trees, its whole life is spent in them, it ought to 
be a great favorite with the horticulturist. 
Ihe cedar-bird or cherry-bird is supposed to have received one of its common 
names from a vicious habit of eating cherries. As a matter of facf it probably eats 
more fruit than any other bird we have, but only thirteen per cent of this is culti¬ 
vated, the wild varieties forming its staple diet. This “cherry-bird” makes five per 
cent of its meals on cherries. It has some excellent traits, take this for an example. 
A flock of about thirty cedar-birds frequented an orchard in Tazewell county, infested 
by canker worms. Seven of these were shot and their stomachs examined, it was 
found that the entire food of these birds consisted of canker-worms. The number in 
each stomach, determined by actual count, ranged from seventy to one hundred and 
one and was usually nearly a hundred. Assuming that these constituted a whole 
day s food, the thirty birds were destroying three thousand worms a day or 90,000 
for the month during which the caterpillar is exposed. 
That swaggering fellow, the bluejay seems desirous of making a bad im¬ 
pression, but the fact is he is a great blusterer; it is only on rare occasions that he 
robs other birds nests and the amount of fruit he consumes is trifling. His favorite 
food is acorns, beechnuts and chestnuts varied with some waste corn and wheat. 
Grasshoppers, caterpillars and beetles form one-fourth of his food. A pair of jays is 
certainly an acquisition to any orchard. 
Woodpeckers come in for plenty of abuse. They are accused of injuring the 
bark of trees, stealing fruit, pecking apples, robbing the nests of other birds and so 
forth. There are nine or ten of these interesting birds recorded from our state, but 
only six species are sufficiently common to deserve mention here. They do all peck 
wood, as their name implies, but with five of our species this is only to get at the 
injurious insect within, and they are thus conservers of forests and orchards. One 
species however, the yellow-bellied woodpecker or sapsucker does eat largely of the 
soft inner layer of bark—the cambium layer—and girdles trees to obtain the sap. 
Where the bird is abundant it can do real injury, but here it is the least common of 
the six species. In our northern counties it is a rare breeder and through the rest of 
the state a not very common migrant, wintering in the southern section. Besides 
cambium and sap, it preys largely on insects and seems never to touch domestic fruit, 
so with us it is likely a beneficial bird. 
The hairy and downy woodpeckers and the flicker are among our most 
valuable birds. The red-bellied or zebra woodpecker only a little less so. The 
led-headed woodpecker occasionally takes fruit and is almost the only bird we 
