BY TUB WAY ST BE 
31 
. sects end twelve per cent, of weed seed, 
showing it to be a bird of great eco¬ 
nomic value. Sparrows, finclies, and 
(juail eat a large amount of weed seed. 
Practically all the food of the tree 
sparrow consists of seed. Examinations 
by Prof. E. E. E. Beal, of the Biologi¬ 
cal Survey of the Department of Agri¬ 
culture, show that a single tree spar¬ 
row will eat, a quarter of an ounce of 
weed seed daily. In a state the size of 
Iowa, tree sparrows alone will consume 
more than eight hundred tons of weed 
seed annually. This, with the work of 
other seed-eating birds, saves the farmer 
i 
I 
II 
r 
an immense amount of work. Nut¬ 
hatches and chickadees scan every part 
of the trunks and limbs of trees for in¬ 
sect eggs. In a day’s time a chickadee 
has been known to eat hundreds of in¬ 
sect eggs and worms that are very harm¬ 
ful to our trees and vegetables. War* 
biers and vireos hunt the leaves and 
buds for moths and millers. Fly¬ 
catchers, swallows, and night hawks are 
busy day and night catching flies that 
bother man and beast. Hawks and 
owls are working silently in daylight 
and darkness to catch moles, mice, 
gophers, and squirrels. 
The 
valuable service which birds ren¬ 
der about the farm is shown most strik¬ 
ingly in places where insects and ro¬ 
dents have become so numerous as to 
destroy crops. Birds collect in places 
where food is abundant, and by giving 
their whole time to hunting and eating 
these pests, they become the most vain- 
ab'e Assistants the farmers can have. 
To illustrate, a few years ago a large 
apple orchard in central Illinois was 
attacked bv canker worms. Prof. S. A. 
« 
Forbes spent two seasons in this local¬ 
ity studying bird life. ITe examined 
the stomachs of thirty-six different spe¬ 
cies of birds and found that seventy- 
two per cent, of those were eating can¬ 
ker worms. Taken as a whole, thirty- 
five per cent of the food of all the 
birds of the locality consisted of these 
worms. Out of a flock of thirty-five 
cedar waxwings, seven were killed and 
examined. AVitli the exception of a few 
small beetles, these birds were living en¬ 
tirely on canker worms. By actual 
count lie found seventy to one hundred 
and one worms in the stomachs of each 
one of these ibrds. If we assume that 
each waxwing ate a hundred worms a 
day, which is a very low estimate, the 
flock of thirty was destroying three 
thousand a day, or during the month 
when caterpillars were out, a flock of 
thirty waxwings would eat ninety 
thousand worms. 
Killing Blackbirds Brought on a Pest of 
Locusts 
A number of vears ago blackbirds were 
exceedingly abundant through eastern 
Nebraska. They were so plentiful that 
the farmers believed they were damaging 
crops so they began poisoning the birds. 
A single grain of corn soaked in 
strychnine was enough to kill a black¬ 
bird. In the years that followed, 
great numbers of these and other birds 
were destroyed during the spring and 
fall. At the same time thousands of 
quail, prairie chickens, and other game 
birds were killed in every county to 
supply the market. As the birds began 
to disappear, swarms of locusts took 
their place. These insects hatched out 
in countless numbers and began devas¬ 
tating crops. Few fields of grain es¬ 
caped damage. Many were entirelv 
destroyed. Where blackbirds, quail, 
prairie chickens, plovers, and other 
birds remained, they took to living en- 
