Each kind of bird has its special work to do. Woodpeckers go under the bark of forest trees for wood-boring beetles and grubs. The cuckoo, or rain-crow, eats hairy caterpillars. The only other birds that can manage these are the orioles. In the stomach of one cuckoo the doctor found two hundred web-worms. The robins clear our lawns; the bluebirds, cat-birds and cedar-birds forage in the orchards. The wood thrushes and flickers feed on the ground in groves. The meadow-larks, bobolinks and red-wings hunt in the pastures and swamps. The swallows, the king-birds, the phoebes and other fly-catchers are raiders of the air. Wrens forage in low plants, shrubs, and in cracks and crannies of house walls and fences. Hawks and owls hunt mice and moles. In August, all the insect-eating birds make a feast of grasshoppers. One brood of robins eats half a million insects and larva in a summer, and not a thousand cherries.
For many, many years scattered bird lovers told their neighbors these things. Some of them were laughed at, some only half believed. The wild birds became fewer and fewer The nests were robbed, the singers killed for their pretty wings. The farmers drove the birds away. Then we began to have wormy orchard fruits, army worms, canker and cut-worms, tent caterpillars, boring weevils, flies, plagues of grasshoppers and Colorado beetles. Countless unseen enemies ate up the farm crops, orchards and gardens, and even the grass on the lawns. We looked everywhere for help except up in the air.
Then it was that our government began to study our bird friends. In the farmer's bureau in the capital at Washington, thousands of little stomachs were opened, in every month of the year. Every bit of food found in them was written down. We know, now, just what every wild bird eats, in every season. If a bird has a bad habit we can help him cure it. The crow pulls up young corn plants for the softened seeds. But if the seeds are soaked in tar water before planting he will not touch it. But he will go into the corn fields for cut worms.
We have taken the trouble, here, to find out for you, from many bird books, and from farmer's bulletins printed by our government, just what our commonest wild birds eat, and how they help us. First of all remember that:
Woodpeckers, cuckoos, swallows (swifts and martins), phoebes, pewees, king-birds and other fly-catchers, wrens, hawks, night-hawks (bull bats) and owls, live almost wholly on animal food. The chick-
