24 
FARMERS ^ BULLETIN 755 . 
In the animal food the largest portion is made up of orthopterous insects (grass¬ 
hoppers, crickets, and katydids), totaling 20.53 per cent for the year. Most insects 
of this group are harmful and at times very destructive. Second in importance in the 
diet are beetles (18.79 per cent), made up in part of useful ground beetles (10.38 per 
cent of the total food), but in this item also are May beetles (3.9 per cent), weevils, or 
snout beetles (1.13 per cent), and miscellaneous related forms (3.38 per cent). The 
useful beetles are sometimes eaten in such numbers as to detract from the esteem in 
which the bluebird is held, the month of May, for instance, charging them against 
the bird to the extent of 36.61 per cent of the food, and every month recording them 
in such quantities as to indicate that they are very palatable to the bluebird. Few 
birds exceed this record of destruction of useful beetles, but it must be remembered 
that for the year they form only about one-tenth of the food, and that the remaining 
food shows that insects as a whole are attacked so impartially that the balance of 
nature is not disturbed, and while one kind of insect life is not exterminated another 
is not allowed to become superabundant; grasshoppers, for instance, enter the food 
of the bluebird about in proportion to their abundance. 
The group third in order of importance in the animal food contains the many forms 
of caterpillars, including a few moths (9.59 per cent). Chief among these are the 
owlet moths, the larvae of which are the well-known cutworms, but there are also 
included hairy caterpillars and the “yellow bear.” The rest of the animal food is 
made up of flying insects, as wasps, bees, and flies, in small quantities, for the bird is 
not very active on the wing; of ants and bugs, among which latter stinkbugs pre¬ 
dominate; remains of chinch bugs, detected in one stomach; a few spiders (2.47 per 
cent); still fewer myriapods, or thousand-legs (1.23 per cent); a mere trace of sowbugs 
and snails; and a few bones of lizards and tree frogs. 
The vegetable food consists largely of fruit obtained from pastures, swamps, and 
hedgerows, rather than from gardens and orchards. Practically all the domestic fruit 
taken was secured in June and November, and the only cultivated species identified 
were cherries and raspberries or blackberries. In December, wild fruit forms two- 
thirds of the monthly food, but this item decreases gradually each month, and in May 
no fruit of any kind is taken. The yearly average is about a third of the total food. 
As fruit is taken chiefly in winter, it follows that it is eaten to tide the bird over until 
insects are again abundant, partly taking the place of seeds in the winter diet of birds 
in general, though seeds, too, are occasionally and sparingly eaten by the bluebird. 
'Among them are seeds of sumac of both harmless and poisonous kinds, bayberry, and 
a little indeterminate vegetable refuse and rubbish, together averaging 7.21 per cent 
of the yearly food. 
The bluebird has never been accused, in the writer’s knowledge, of objectionable 
habits, and cultivated crops are not only safe from its attacks, but are benefited by its 
ridding them of an overabundance of harmful insects. In spring and early summer, 
when berries and small fruits are at their best, the bird subsists upon insects to the 
extent of five-sixths of its food. Its fruit-eating period is from late fall to early spring, 
when insects are scarce and waste fruit available. The point that has been urged 
against the bird, its destruction of predacious beetles, is a harmful trait more apparent 
than real, inasmuch as its record on all other lines is absolutely in its favor. Field 
observation and laboratory analysis of the food fully justify the high esteem in which 
the bird is held, and there is not the slightest excuse for persecuting it or withdrawing 
from it the smallest degree of protection.- — f. e. l. b. 
CAROLINA CHICKADEE . 1 
The Carolina chickadee (fig. 13) ranges through the southern portion of the United 
States from the Atlantic to the Rockies and north to the Ohio River and to some extent 
beyond. Its nest is built in hollow trees or posts, or in boxes set up for its special 
1 Penthestes carolincnsis. 
