adees are insect feeders, too. They stay with us all winter, and hunt out sleeping flies, and the eggs and chrysalids of moths and beetles. The king-bird is called the bee-martin, and has been accused of eating honey bees. It has been found that it eats only drone bees. Drones have white faces, and no stingers. And it catches the robber-fly that destroys bees. King-birds protect poultry yards and other song birds by driving away hawks, crows and jaybirds. They eat such wild fruits as elder berries. Hawks and owls live mostly on mice, moles and other small rodents. Woodpeckers eat the fruits of the dogwood, Virginia creeper, poison ivy, sumac and the nuts of beech trees. No farm, garden, orchard, park or lawn can afford to be without the insect feeders. A woodpecker or king-bird should never be disturbed. Wrens, swallows, phoebes and chickadees should be encouraged to nest near our homes.
Among the useful seed eaters are doves, pigeons, the native sparrows, and the gold-finches or wild canaries. Mourning doves eat the seeds of weeds and the gleanings of grain fields. One-third of the food of our native sparrows in summer is insects, but the hard seeds of grasses, weeds and waste grain is the chief food. The goldfinch eats weed and thistle seeds, and bush buds. A very useful bird on a farm is the quail (bob-white or partridge). Two-thirds ot its food is weed seeds, the rest harmful insects and waste grain. The English sparrow is a pest. He lives in flocks, is quarrelsome, drives away our song birds, and lives on us all the year around, eating only the useful grains. He is the feathered mouse, and should be treated as a pest.
All the rest of our wild birds use a mixed diet of insects, seeds and fruits. The amounts differ with each, and with the same birds in different seasons. Thus, from March to June, the robin lives on ground beetles, larva, angle worms, spiders, snails and dry berries left over winter on bushes. He helps himself to orchard cherries in June. Late cherries he does not touch, for then the choke cherries, elder berries, cranberries, briar berries and sumac seeds are ripe. The Russian mulberry, that ripens with the early cherries, he really prefers. Plant a mulberry tree, and fruit-bearing shrubs and vines on the edge of an orchard, and the robin, bluebird, cat-bird, cedar-bird, jays and many other birds will do little harm to the cultivated fruits. In August, the robins eat grasshoppers and wild fruits.
Three-fourths of the bluebird's food is insects, the rest wild fruits and seeds. The meadow-lark's food is three-fourths ground
