Show Out of Doors in the West of Natural History in the Rocky Mountain Plateau by J. H. Professor of Nature Study In the University of Utah The Tree Sparrow Adapted from Audubon Society Leaflet 71 by Dutcher Notes on Farm Pests Adapted from Experiment Station Bulletins The or is a member of the very widely distributed and numerous family which contains over five hundred and fifty This family all the Linnets and While these are dull yet of the family are noted for-their exceptionally striking as 1 lie Rose-breasted and Blue Indigo and Painted This family also includes some of the best of the singing with few its members may be included among the birds that are economically of the greatest value to the human The bills of the Finches t Vir mr and other members of the while widely diversified in are always stout and strong and adapted to crushing or opening seed capsules for the fruit within Seeds constitute the largest part of the food supply of all the members of this great The Tree Sparrow is a very and should be a well known winter bird throughout a large section of the United It THE TREE SPARROW associates freely with the Junco and does not hesitate to visit dooryards and gleaning from them weed and other giving voice to contented and happy notes of thanksgiving for food and pleasant What It The name Tree Sparrow always to the writer a picture seen many years There had been almost a such a storm as Whit-tier describes in The morning after the storm the sun was shining with that winter brilliancy when the air seems to sparkle and Everywhere there was a unbroken mantle of In a last year's that J been poorly cultivated and was' overrun with that most noxious plant known to all farmers as the Ji ragweed there were hundreds of Tree Sparrows clinging to fJ tops' of the weed just lT showing above the carpet of They were feeding on the ripened jt a long fast and great hun- ger had made them very they made a beautiful and animated a joyous picture of happy everywhere were jw and voices lifted up 1 in thankfulness for nature's What-the had neglected to do the previous fall this flock of Tree Sparrows' was doing for The number of seeds destroyed in that one field on day alone must have been beyond computation in The 5 er of the land probably wondered t the next season why his field so clear of he little dreamed of the cleansing process that was carried on that bright-winter day by his friends the Tree 3 i As a Weed S Tree Sparrow fairly swarms all over the northern states in arriving from the north early in Oe- v. tober and leaving in Examination of many stomachs shows that in winter the Tree T Sparrow feeds seeds and probably each Ti an a In an article to in the writer estimated the amount of weed seed annually destroyed by these birds state of upon the one-fourth of an ounce seed eaten by each and sup-Hf posing that the birds average ten to each square and that they Bt remain in their winter range two hundred we shall have a to-Wf W of pounds or w of weed seed consumed by p this one species in a single sea Large as these figures may they certainly fall far short of the The estimate of ten birds to a square mile is much within the for the Tree Sparrow is certainly more abundant than this in winter in where the food supply is less than in the western and I have known places in Iowa where several thousand could be seen within the space of a few The Eastern The eastern Tree Sparrow has the entire crown and back of head bright in winter most of the feathers with a very narrow edging of pale wearing off by leaves the crown uniform line over sides of head and neck this color extending forming a narrow back each feather having a broad central stripe of giving a decidedly streaked lower back and rump the upper tail coverts being narrowly edged with under throat and upper breast light fading to almost white on lower breast and the sides and flanks being washed with pale on middle of breast a blackish spot or blotch wing quills dark the coverts showing a great amount of each feather with a broad central black similar to pattern on all margined with thus forming two conspicuous white tail dark the two outside feathers much all having very narrow whitish legs feet and claws upper man- dible and tip of lower one nearly fe remaining two-thirds of latter x Western Tree Si From tip of bill to end of from to 6 The western Tree Sparrow its eastern of on the and with an ashy crown patch or The are so slight that they would have no value to a person studying a strange through an opera in order to identify The nest is built of fine hair and is placed on or near the The eggs are from three to five in pale greenish blue speckled or spotted with reddish The Tree Sparrows are found during the breeding season north of the United in and the region about Hudson's while A May Beetle or enlarged Two and One-Fifth Times the western race breeds from the valley of Anderson westward through After the breeding season these birds migrate southward and reach the Carolinas and westward as far as middle Utah and The Corn Root The corn root aphis is represented in late fall only by eggs left behind in the nests of the corn field to remain there through the winter with the eggs and young of the ants Fall plowing of an infested followed by a deep and thorough stirring and mixing of the ground by means of a disk harrow with will so scatter the contents of these nests through the dirt as greatly to-re- duce the number of the root lice the following The later in the season this work can be done the Winter is the best time for The eggs of this root or are left in the corn till April or and do not hatch does not that May Hence corn follow corn must at first be free from these lice on the Effects of Crop clears the land of the also a notorious corn root worm little insect that burrows within roots of the corn from early June to sometimes destroying the entire It changes underground in July and August into a one-fifth of an inch dull yellow as it first comes to the but changing presently to grass This feeding at first upon the corn pollen and young silk at the tip of the gives warning by its abundance in August and September that the crop should be changed the following since the incapable of living on any other food than the roots of the perish as they hatch from the egg if the ground A White-Grub or Larva Enlarged Two and One-Half Times is in any other The presence of root worms is shown by the failure of the corn if white grubs cause the the ground in the worst injured spots will be clear of since the grubs indiscriminately eat the roots of all Larvae of June White grubs are the larvae of June called also May They are readily destroyed by turning pigs into the infested fields in fall or late In summer most of the grubs are within three inches of the surface but later they and by end of November they may be a foot or more beneath the By the middle of the the grubs may often be found in a fairly uniform layer at a depth of from eighteen inches to two according to the latitude and the severity of the The precise time of their return to the surface in spring has f been but they ly begin work at the roots' plants in central Illinois as e as the first of April as a Pigs and White Pigs are extremely fond of white and the with which they will L the soil of an infested y a matter of common An experiment made in county in 1906 their A ten-acre t in the center of a field of contained an average of 3 L grubs per or the j i are One hundred and eight j. 4 pastured on this tract duri fog twenty-seven p September accor U ing to our one per cent of these grubs equal 1 m grubs per pig per Pigs Protected the d Considerable other food way obtained by the swine fro the corn on this ten i jy r though the crop was a fa failure because of injury by tt ifo The plants height from two inches as jy the full number of ears bornA I hills was all small a or The pigs seemed actually fer the grubs to the hoi and would leave ears of tl 1 latter lying on the ground tow 1 for their insect j As the season advanced and tl grubs began to go down the pi went with rooting up ll ground in places to depths of The pigs had gained in sufficiently at the end of so that they were sol 1 by the owner at a the service as grub-killers cost The insects named above not the only ones destroyed t fall t mato worms and various harmful moth other of injurious are all checked in numbers often entirely destroyed ly practice of thrifty farmers turning over the ground I When is the best time to jj the book of In dew WT or when autumn MS |