Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1895 — The Service of Birds. [ARTICLE]

The Service of Birds.

The birds do an immense amount of drudgery for man, though they sometimes reward themselves for this hard, work by dainty tidbits of ripening fruit. A pair of common American robins, or thrushes, have been watched while they carried three thousand earth worms to one brood. Woodpeckers destroy eggs and larvae which would literally develop millions of destructive creatures, both in forests and orchards? and one of the most inveterate foes of the canker worm is the beautiful oriole, were it but allowed to live and hang its swinging cradle in the elm. For every wing of black and gold on a young girl’s hat an apple tree is stripped of leaves and young fruit, and left brown and ugly in the summer sun, or an elm is denuded of its graceful foliage by the loathsome canker worm.