A barn-swallow, hurt in some way on its northward flight, had fed on cotton-boll weevil, in flying over the young cotton plants in the south. And she had eaten flies, mosquitoes, gnats and little wasps, and in her stomach were the broken wings of the gad-fly that stings horses. The doctor put more brackets under the eaves of the barn, on which these little friends of barnyard animals could brace their nests.

For the house-wrens and bluebirds the doctor put up box nests. For the phoebes he had a grape-arbor and a vine-draped porch. For the chickadees he planted a thick hedge for the brown thrush and song-sparrow low-growing shrubs. There was a mulberry tree for the orchard birds to feed upon, a cedar tree for wax-wing. And along the pasture he let the elderberry bushes, wild blackberry briars and briar roses grow, for the fruit. There were sumac bushes, too, and alder saplings, a choke cherry and other wild fruit and seed-making trees. For years and years he kept on telling his neighbors that nearly all of our wild birds are insect, wild fruit and weed seed eaters.

Chickadee

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.