Show Out of Doors in the West Sketches of Natural History in the Rocky Mountain Plateau Edited by J. H. Professor of Nature Study in the University of Utah The Oriole and Meadowlark Insect MOUNTAIN We have two of the one shown in the cut common in the the long-tailed often mingling it in The throat and top of the head of the mountain chickadee are jet with a white line above the of the head back under parts sides dark tinged with It is' unsuspicious and and of good service as an insect The long-tailed has an ashy back tinged with wings with white patch and tail edged with sides and flanks pale It seems a little peculiar that such delightful musicians as the bobolink and meadowlark should be given a place in the family as the yellow-headed and but such is The The is one of the s Avell birds of our and one of the most useful as These birds are AA-idely s They are remaining here and braving the cold of they come about the buildings of the ranch and 1 assume that you at some have had an opportunity to make the acquaintance of The food of the meadowlark makes it of especial value upon the It feeds upon noxious especially in the and lives upon weeds and other seeds in the It builds its nest upon the often partly and lays four Its song is striking and beautiful at all but heard a Joyous challenge across the barren landscape of it is particularly In some bird find it hardly possible to express their appreciation of this but place it in the front rank Avith the best of bird The Western Another interesting form that belongs to this family is the In Utah Ave have tAvo one of the Scott oriole is confined to the southern and part of the the the Bullock is the form commonly met Avith in all other sections of the This is the more modestly representative of the gorgeous eastern Baltimore There is also a marked difference in the songs of the tAvo that of the eastern form being and more but the song of the bird is not to be In their chattering call and in their food and nest-I ing the birds are in all respects The orioles arrive in Utah or in this part of the state from the to the of Last spring I met with orioles for the first time over at Alhambra in Uintah county on May I heard the note while we were being ferried over Green river at that and when we 1 located the birds in one of the trees along the bank of the Wonderful Hanging Out of twine and fibre these birds build a curious made in the form of a which they swing from the tip of a far out from the body of the and beyond the reach of all ordinary In this is from three to six or or pale buffy marked with irregular Destroyers of The orioles are sometimes accused of taking and they certainly do some but are among the foremost in the destruction of injurious In the spring especially they are to be found in orchards and shade gleaning their food from the often going far out on the smaller twigs and searching the under sides of leaves for dainty Protect This From every point of these birds should be protected and And the same is true of all the members of the family under It is true that blackbirds do some damage to but they pay well for the damage they do in the destruction of insects during the and in the vast quantities of weed seed taken during at least seven months of while the o her members of the family the the the oriole in their leave little to be and should everywhere be encouraged and Food of the Nearly three-fourths of the meadowlark 's food for the including the winter consists of In August and September the meadowlark subsists almost exclusively on insect Tn March insects are not readily yet the meadowlark finds enough to make 73 per cent of its entire Similarly in December and January the insect food amounts to 39 and 24 per to the Of the total insect food of the birds locusts and crickets constitute by far the most important averaging 29 per cent of all food consumed during the Even in January they form more than 1 per and increase rapidly until when they the surprising amount of 69 per They decrease slowly during the autumn but in November still amount to 28 per but naturally fall away quickly in It is extremely doubtful if any other bird will show a better grasshopper record than The birds were not collected in any region especially infested Avith but gathered from nearly parts of the United Out of the whole number of stomachs contained one containing as many as Of the 28 birds taken in in seven different all but one contained and one from New was filled with 30 common 14 green grasshoppers and 10 In Dollars and Fisher gives the weight of an average grasshopper as and entomologists place the daily food of a grasshopper as equal to the creature's own Remains of 54 grasshoppers have been found in a single meadowlark 's Such is digested it is safe to assume that at least 50 grasshoppers are eaten each If the number of birds breeding in one square mile of meadow land is estimated at five and the number of young that reach maturity at only two for each or ten in there will be twenty birds on a square mile- during the grasshopper On this the birds would destroy grasshoppers in one The thousand grasshoppers eaten by the larks each day represent a saving of pounds of or 66 pounds in all for the If this forage is estimated at per the value of the crop saved by meadowlarks on a township of 36 square miles each month during would be the grasshopper season about May Snout and Leaf Beetles of many species stand next to crickets and grasshoppers in and constitute nearly 18 per cent of the meadow-lark's annual The great majority of the May beetles live upon vegetable and at their attention to any time turn useful plants the whole family may therefore be classed as The average consumption of May beetles amounts to about 4 per cent of the entire The greatest numbers are eaten in they form over 21 per cent of the The snout or form a small but very constant averaging about 3 per cent for the June shows the greatest with over 7 per singularly January stands with almost 5 per including the and the scarred snout both of which include some of the most harmful insects The plum is a well known Leaf beetles are supposed to be disagreeable to but their remains were found in 19 of the it therefore seems highly probable that meadowlarks will eat Colorado potato Beneficial The meadowlark might be expected to subsist largely upon the beneficial predaceous as they also live mainly upon the ground and are very These insects constitute 7 per cent of the food during the This seems to indicate that instead of seeking them the bird simply eats such as fall in its way in default of better Bugs pretty regularly eaten throughout the year 4 per cent of all the The greater number belong to the family of stink some of which are familiar to all who have eaten raspberries from the Most of these bugs are eaten in when they constitute 14 per cent of the food of the While some of them are harmful as well as others lo much good by devouring other so the destruction of the various members of this family is not an mi mixed stomach contained three specimens of the t o- chinch an ins whose ravages in our wheat corn fields have cost the millions of or the larvae 0 butterflies and formaT considerable part of the the They present in every month and even the stomachs taken in December per cent of this while average for the year is per The caterpillars must be species that live on o near the ground and feed on and other low such as var ious species of number of these were in the Ants form a fairly element of the meadowlark 's dil averaging a little less than 3 m cent for the Other Hymn about per cent for the year and are only important in Jul and Spiders and seem to be and aggregate near ly 5 per cent of the Besiie i the insects already several flies were coi in a few a dra on fly in and common cattle tick in Amount of Grain I It is evident that the lark is pre-eminently an eater still it has recourse wha necessary to vegetable The total vegetable food forth year amounts to 27 per Grain aggregates per The percentages The larg quantity of grain was eaten when the stomachs coi 53 per cent of H and 9 of During ft summer the grain M to appear again as the ply of insects Sprout grain was not found in Seeds of weeds were every month except MV- the single stomach in which per cent of barn-grass seeds attain their over 25 per cent in The average for the year tie more than 11 per same as vegetable food averages M 1 per I m 1 1 The meadowlarks might be expected to injure grain when they collect in as they sometimes but at the time of harvesting wheat and oats they are not found in and the record shows that practically no wheat or oats were found in the it being the season when insects were most abundant and formed nearly the whole the stomach of a bird killed of shocked oats in a field contained nothing but In September and when corn is being the amount of this grain found in the stomachs was less than 1 per In when insects begin fo the vegetable food but weeds are for in this month grain amounts to only 6 per while weed seeds reach 15 per m We The is most emphatically an infect evidently preferring above all other and in default of its favorite food fit can subsist on a vegetable which are thus able to ary their diet and subsist food when their ordinary supply of insects are l much more valuable than those which are entirely This is exactly the case with the Eastern and Western In most places where the oriole makes its the especially the would no more think of killing it or destroying its nest than would the Hollander shoot the stork that nests on his The Baltimore oriole breeds throughout the eastern United States north of It is abundant in New and extends west over the tree-covered parts of the Great beyond which it is replaced by another species of much the same appearance As its food consists largely of insects live in the foliage of its arrival in the north is delayed until these have become plentiful in It begins to move southward early in and is rarely seen in Food of the The food for the whole season consisted of per cent of animal matter and per cent of vegetable The largest amount of insect food was eaten in it formed 92 per cent of the and the smallest in April and when it formed 70 per The most important item of the insect food is which aggregate more than 34 per cent of the The oriole spends a great deal of time searching among leaves and where such insects An average of 25 per cent of caterpillars was found in the two stomachs taken in After July the percentage of eaten increases The Click Beetles of various families and species next to caterpillars in Those most eaten are the or insects having very hard which would seem to render them undesirable for Click beetles constitute per cent for each of the six months under These beetles and their known as are among the most destructive insects with which the farmer has to Comstock is hardly a cultivated plant that they do not and working as they beneath the surface of the it is extremely difficult to destroy Not only do they infest a great variety of but they are very apt to attack them at the most susceptible period of their before they have attained sufficient size and strength to withstand the and often the seed is destroyed before it has Thus fields of corn or other grain are ruined at the As there are over species of snapping beetles in North it is gratifying to know that the oriole is especially fond of May and Leaf The May beetles stand next to the click beetles in importance as food of the They were found in stomachs collected during every month from May to The average the whole season was 3 per Leaf beetles are not supposed to be a favorite food of owing to their but they were eaten by-the orioles in every month except Among them was the well known striped squash which in the larval state bores the roots of squashes or and when adult feeds on their Another member of the same family feeds on the leaves of the and in some places ruins the while another of the same genus feeds on apple Both of these were identified in the Snout or form a small but fairly constant element of the oriole's amounting to a little more than 2 per cent for the All are noxious and belong for the most part to the families of the and the scarred snout Spares Useful The predaceous beetles constitute an element of great interest in the food of any As these beetles themselves live for the most part on other it is desirable that they should be allowed to pursue this good work as long as That they are not molested by orioles is proved by the fact that in the stomachs examined predaceous beetles averaged only half of 1 per cent for the and the greatest number taken in any month amounted to little more than 1 per Wasps constitute an important element of the food every varying from 20 per cent in April to about 8 per cent in and averaging nearly 11 per cent for the As these insects spend a large part of time buzzing about flowers and it seems only natural that they should be eaten by the which also belong to the are eaten to some extent through the spring and but are only important in April and when form about 10 per cent of the They belong for the most part to the large black species of which live on trees and nurse plant Bugs and of various species are favorites with the as they are with many other and form about 6 per cent of the food for the Many of these are stink which crawl over berries and impart a disgusting flavor to Others belong to the fam ily of assassin which feed on other but the most interesting members of this order are the scale lice and common plant lice two of the most destructive families of insects They are so minute that it seems surprising that any bird should care to eat but scale lice were found in eight stomachs and in Flies make up more than 4 per cent of the food in and no less than 7 per cent in the single stomach taken in The most interesting are the larvae of the March of which one stomach contained about These larvae feed on roots of grass and must have been obtained from the Grasshoppers and locusts were eaten in July and August to the extent of 11 and 17 per W. F. of states that the oriole sometimes punctures grapes to suck the but adds that the bird is worth its weight in gold as an insect The stomach examinations show that it destroys immense numbers of and noxious and does not prey to a noticeable extent on predaceous or useful Added to these good its brilliant sprightly pleasing song and skill in nest building excite our said one German to another in the streets of are you crying am crying because the great Rothschild is was the why should you cry about Avas the further was no relation of was was the half-smothered in relation at and that's just what I'm crying a tress of a woman's The lover fondly yet it forms a halo above her sacred a tress of a woman's The smiling And laid it on the back of a chair And went to |