destroyed. If crows or blackbirds are seen in numbers about cornfields, or if woodpeckers are noticed at work in an orchard, it is perhaps not surprising that they are accused of doing harm. Careful investigation, however, often shows that they are actually destroying noxious insects; and also that even those which do harm at one season may compensate for it by eating insect pests at another. Insects are eaten at all times by the majority of land birds. During the breeding season most kinds subsist largely on this food, and rear their young exclusively upon it.
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Fig. 323.—Head of Duck.
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Fig. 324.—Jacana. (Mexico, Southwest Texas, and Florida.)
Questions: What appears to be the use of such long toes? What peculiarity of wing? head?
Partridges.—Speaking of 13 birds which he shot, Dr. Judd says:
These 13 had taken weed seed to the extent of 63 per cent of
their food. Thirty-eight per cent was ragweed, 2 per cent tick
trefoil, partridge pea, and locust seeds, and 23 per cent seeds of
miscellaneous weeds. About 14 per cent of the quail's food for
