Nature biographies; the lives of some every-day butterflies; moths; grasshoppers and flies . e seen in great numbers flying about the maple, elm,apple, pear, ash, and other trees, laying their eggs nearthe tips of the twigs, — frying by daylight. Then the birdshad another feast. Vireos of four kinds, flycatchers ofthree kinds, both cuckoos, robins, rose-breasted gros-beaks, tanagers, cedar-birds, cat-birds, orioles, red-wingedblackbirds, martins, and sparrows fed on the moths asthey had done on the pup^e and larvae. Chipping spar-rows became expert lofty tumblers in their zigzag pur-suit of th
Nature biographies; the lives of some every-day butterflies; moths; grasshoppers and flies . e seen in great numbers flying about the maple, elm,apple, pear, ash, and other trees, laying their eggs nearthe tips of the twigs, — frying by daylight. Then the birdshad another feast. Vireos of four kinds, flycatchers ofthree kinds, both cuckoos, robins, rose-breasted gros-beaks, tanagers, cedar-birds, cat-birds, orioles, red-wingedblackbirds, martins, and sparrows fed on the moths asthey had done on the pup^e and larvae. Chipping spar-rows became expert lofty tumblers in their zigzag pur-suit of the flying moths, and even the English sparrowshad a brief season of usefulness, for they really ate some 56 A Devastator of Forests. of these moths, though they would not touch either pupaeor larvae. The Baltimore orioles were among the most efficientenemies of the caterpillars, destroying them in greatnumbers for their own food as well as to feed theiryoung. These orioles are exceedingly useful birds, asthey generally feed freely upon hairy caterpillars. 57 STUDIES OF WALKING-STICKS. %. The Walking-stick ^ has always seemed to me to occupy among our insects much the same posi- ^ ^ tion that the least bittern occupies ^ - ^ amono- our birds. The latter has been well described bv Mr. FrankM. Chapman as a half-solvedmystery, to be thought of lessas a bird than as a survivor of aformer geological period, when birds still showed traitsof their not distant reptilian ancestors. Both thesecreatures are extreme examples of that resemblance tosurroundings which enters so largely into the make-upof the animal world, and they both have a well-developedinstinct for keeping quiet to render more effective theirpeculiarities of colour and structure. The walking-stickseems, indeed, to have stepped from the pages of thebooks of Bates and Wallace with their stories of tropicalmimicry, or at least to belong exclusively to the faunaof our Southern states, where it has for company theweird praying
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectinsects, bookyear1901
