. 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 . rk brown; tail slightly Female. —Brown above, glossed on head and back with blue or purplish; forehead and throat mottled with gray; breast brownish; belly — In a hollow tree or bird — —April to August. Many years ago Dr. Brewer wrote Audubon that an un-usually cold season had destroyed all the Purple Martins inthe neighbor
. 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 . rk brown; tail slightly Female. —Brown above, glossed on head and back with blue or purplish; forehead and throat mottled with gray; breast brownish; belly — In a hollow tree or bird — —April to August. Many years ago Dr. Brewer wrote Audubon that an un-usually cold season had destroyed all the Purple Martins inthe neighborhood of Boston. Since then other occurrencesof this kind have been re-ported, but there was no per-manent widespread diminutionin their numbers until the English Sparrows becamenumerous. Then the Martinswere gradually driven awaj, until they bred only locally, Fig. Martin, male, , oue-half natural size. and had disappeared from a large part of the State. The June storms of 1903-04nearly completed their extirpation from the State as breed-ers, and except in a few favored localities their boxes arenow (1906) all taken by the Sparrows. The Martin is a southern bird, and cannot long withstand. 348 USEFUL BIRDS. cold storms in the breeding season. It is also one of themost purely insectivorous of all birds, and feeds almost en-tirely on winged insects. Therefore, when the air is clearedof flying insects by long, cold rains or hard frosts, it muststarve. Its note is a full-toned chirruping carol, musical and clear, beginning peuo-peuo-peuo. It feeds largely on some ofthe greatest pests of the beetles and May beetles arecaught in large numbers. John writes that a quart of thewing cases and other rejecta of thatcommon pest, the striped cucumberbeetle, were taken from a hole in aMartin box; and Dr. Packard makes a similar flies and flies that trouble horses and cattle are takenin considerable numbers from the sides of houses
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1913
