. Useful birds and their protection. Containing brief descriptions of the more common and useful species of Massachusetts, with accounts of their food habits, and a chapter on the means of attracting and protecting birds. Birds; Birds. Fig. 135. â Moth of the tent caterpillar natural size. chips, a sort of squeak, and a series of querulous twitters, uttered when the bird is angry. The males are sometimes pugnacious, and have been known to fight to the death. The Chippy feeds very largely in spring and early summer on small caterpillars, and is therefore very useful in the orchard. Mr. Kirkland
. Useful birds and their protection. Containing brief descriptions of the more common and useful species of Massachusetts, with accounts of their food habits, and a chapter on the means of attracting and protecting birds. Birds; Birds. Fig. 135. â Moth of the tent caterpillar natural size. chips, a sort of squeak, and a series of querulous twitters, uttered when the bird is angry. The males are sometimes pugnacious, and have been known to fight to the death. The Chippy feeds very largely in spring and early summer on small caterpillars, and is therefore very useful in the orchard. Mr. Kirkland saw a single bird eat fifty-four cankerworms at one sitting. The Chippy is destructive to hairy caterpillars. It was the Chipping Sparrow that frequently interfered with experiments upon gipsy caterpillars, by breaking through the net that enclosed them and stealing the hairy worms. This bird is a persistent enemy of the caterpillar of the brown-tail moth, the tent caterpillar, and that of the tus- sock moth. Nocturnal moths; particularly Arctians, and Tineid moths are caught in the air. Currant worms do not come amiss. It is destructive to the codling moth and the moths of the tent caterpillar and the forest tent caterpillar. In all, thirty-eight per cent, of the food of the Chipping Sparrow consists of animal matter, three-fourths of which is made up of noxious insects. In June ninety-three per cent, of the food consists of insects, of which thirty-six per cent, is grasshoppers, caterpillars form twenty-five per cent., and leaf-eating beetles six per cent. I have been much im- pressed with the value of this bird in the garden during the spring and summer months. It destroys at least three species of caterpillar on the cabbage. It is the most destructive of all birds to the injurious pea louse (JVectarqphora destructor'), which caused a loss of three million dollars to the pea crop of a single. Fig. â Chipping Sparrows hunting beet Please note that these image
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