nest of some small birds.

In the Bobolink, Meadowlark, Orioles, and Black-birds, we have some of
the most important insect destroyers among the feathered tribes. The
Bobolink is with us only during the summer months when it is entirely
insectivorous; and the same can be said of the Cowbird, although the
latter has the bad habit of compelling other birds to rear its young.

In the Red-winged Blackbird we have a friend that we little dream of
when we see the large flocks gathering about our corn-fields during
late summer, and early fall. During the balance of the year it is
engaged most of the time in waging war on various insect pests,
including such forms as the "grub-worms," cut-worms, grasshoppers,
army worm, beet caterpillar, etc. Even when it visits our corn-fields
it more than pays for the corn it eats by the destruction of the worms
that lurk under the husks of a large per cent of the ears in every
field.

[Illustration: BOBOLINK.]

Several years ago the beet fields in the vicinity of Grand Island were
threatened great injury by a certain caterpillar that had nearly
defoliated all the beets growing in many of them. At about this time
large flocks of this bird appeared and after a week's sojourn the
caterpillar plague had vanished, it having been converted into bird
tissues. Numerous other records of the efficiency of their labor as
destroyers of insect pests might be quoted in favor of this bird, but
I do not believe this to be necessary, although considerable evidence
has been recorded of its destroying both fruits and grains.