OCR Text |
Show Our Friends the Bird. Another bird most friendly to man Is the Jolly, lively little house wren, whose song bubbles and tumbles all over itself in its haste to get out He will appreciate a box for a home also, but make ihe hole only an inch wide. Ninety-eight per cent of the wren's food is Insects. The barn swallow, a most useful bird, can also be persuaded to live near us if we will encourage him a little; sometimes a small hole cut in the gable of the barn is all the invitation he needs. In the lilac bushes in your yard you may find nests of the yellow warbler, the cat bird and the brown thrasher, that long cinnamon-brown bird with the glorious voice, and in your maples and elms the robins, orioles, and vi-reos, vi-reos, tho rose-breasted grosbeak and the cedar birds may build, or perhaps the wood thrush, our finest singer. All of these birds are Invaluable, oven though some of them may eat a few of our cherries. They all prefer pre-fer wild fruit, if they can find It, and It is a good plan to plant some of our wild fruit trees near our cherry orchards. The beautiful rose-breasted grosbeak is one of the few birds that will cat potato bugs in quantities. The oriole eats the grub of tho click beetle, ono of the most destructive worms known. In the fields you will hear the sweet, loud whlstlo of the meadow lark. There are also the red-winged blackbird and the gay bobolink. Tho latter is a destructive bird in the rico fields of tho South, where It is called the reed bird, but here it lives mostly on weed seeds, and is beneficial. benefi-cial. Tho red-winged blackbird destroys de-stroys weevils, ono of our worst insects. in-sects. Tho stomach of ono meadow lark contained thirty-seven grasshoppers. grass-hoppers. This bird Is, unfortunately, sometimes shot as a game bird, but ho is too valuablo to bo spared. Out In tho wood lot we tlnd the chickadee, that friendly little gray and white fellow, with a black cap. In the stomachs of four chickadees wero found moths of tho canKerworm containing con-taining 1.02G eggs, from whicu it has been estimated that during the twenty-five days in which these female moths crawl up trees each chlckadeo would destroy 138.7C0 eggs. Ellon Drummond Farwell. |