Some Common Birds Useful to the Farmer (1915 edition)Beal, F. E. L. (Foster Ellenborough Lascelles)
Science
Some Common Birds Useful to the Farmer (1915 edition)
Beal, F. E. L. (Foster Ellenborough Lascelles)
Birds -- United States
Examination of 289 stomachs of this chickadee shows that its food
consists of 68 per cent animal matter (insects) and 32 per cent
vegetable matter. The former is made up of small caterpillars and
moths and their eggs. Prominent among the latter are the eggs of the
tent-caterpillar moths, both the orchard and forest species. As these
are two of our most destructive insects, the good done by the chickadee
in devouring their eggs needs no comment. During the winter the
chickadee’s food is made up of larvæ, chrysalids, and eggs of moths,
varied by a few seeds, but as spring brings out hordes of flying,
crawling, and jumping insects, the bird varies its diet by taking also
some of these. Flies and bugs are the favorites until the weather
becomes quite warm, when beetles and small wasps also are enjoyed.
Among the bugs may be mentioned the plant lice and their eggs which are
eaten in winter. The beetles nearly all belong to the group of snout
beetles, more commonly known as weevils. These insects are mostly of
small size, and nearly all are known to the farmer or fruit raiser as
pests. Seventeen of them were found in one stomach. The plum curculio
and the cotton-boll weevil may be taken as fair examples. Grasshoppers
do not at any time constitute an important element of the food of the
chickadee, as they are too large for so small a bird; moreover they are
for the most part terrestrial insects, while the bird is essentially
arboreal. Small wasps and ants are eaten to some extent. Spiders
constitute an important element of the food and are eaten at all times
of the year, the birds locating them when they are hibernating in
winter, as well as when they are active in summer. The vegetable food
of the chickadee consists largely of small seeds except in summer when
they are replaced by pulp of wild fruit. The wax from the seeds of
poison ivy is eaten during the winter months, but the seeds themselves
are not taken. In this respect the chickadee differs from most other
birds which swallow the seeds whole; these, after digesting the wax,
pass the seeds through the alimentary canal, and so scatter them
broadcast to reproduce the noxious plants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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