Identifier: birdsofvillagefi00bail (find matches)
Title: Birds of village and field: a bird book for beginners
Year: 1898 (1890s)
Authors: Bailey, Florence Merriam, b. 1863
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton, Mifflin and company
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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States and its Canadian range, and wintersfrom Virginia southward. In Minnesota there is a bounty on the Eed-wing,but its grain-eating habit is purely local, and, asProfessor Beal has found, nearly seven eighths ofits food is of injurious weeds and insects whosedestruction is a decided benefit to agriculture.This shows unmistakably that the bird should beprotected, except perhaps in a few places whereit may be too abundant. Prof. Lawrence Bruner says : In the Eed-winofed Blackbird we have a friend that we littledream of when we see the large flocks gatheringabout our cornfields during late summer and earlyfall. During the balance of the year it is en-gaged most of the time in waging war u^^onvarious insect pests, including such forms as thegrub worms, cutworms, grasshoppers, army worm,beet caterpillar, etc. Even when it visits ourcornfields it more than pays for the corn it eats,by the destruction of the worms that lurk underthe husks of the large per cent, of the ears inevery field.
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PLATE VI. — RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDAdult male, epaulettes bright scarlet, edged with whitish ; restof plumage l)lack. Adult female, upper parts dark brown,streaked ; under parts huffy, streaked with brown; throattinged vnth orange or yellow. Length, about 9; inches. RED-WINGED BLACKBIJRD 97 Several years ago the beet fields in the vicin-ity of Grand Island were threatened with greatinjury by a certain caterpillar that had nearlydefoliated all the beets growing in many of them.At about this time large flocks of this bird ap-peared, and after a weeks sojourn the caterpillarplague had vanished. Throughout the summer the Red-wing feedslargely on insects, and even while grain is still tobe had it begins toeat weed seed, andcontinues throughthe winter servingthe farmer by de-stroying such pestsas ragweed, fox-tail grass and bind-weed. In fact, sta-tistics show that 57per cent, of its to-tal vegetable foodis composed of nox-ious weeds, as against 13 per cent, of grain. Inthe ricefields of the

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