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In autumn, when he leaves the marsh and brings his flock to the grain-fields, we do not like him quite so well; but the Wise Men say that even then he is a good fairy in disguise, eating cutworms, army-worms, and other injurious kinds; even when stealing a bit of green corn, they think he clears away the worms that bore under the husks." The Red-winged Blackbird Length nine and a half inches.
But Mother it was so like her! the first time Cousin Parnelia happened to come to the house, Mother picked up the deed from her desk and said offhand, 'Oh, Parnelia, we bought the little Garens house for you, and handed her the paper, and went to talking about cutworms or Bordeaux mixture." "I see her. I see your mother Vermont to the core."
Kah!" he called from sun-up to sun-down, keeping the Brown-eyed Boy and the Blue-eyed Girl busy digging earthworms and cutworms and white grubs, and soaking bread in milk for him. "Gubble-gubble-gubble," he said as he swallowed it it was all so very good. Kah! The joke of it was that Corbie, even then, had a secret his first one. He had many later on.
The mother quail, with her family of twelve to twenty little ones, patrols the fields thoroughly for insects. Quails should be prized as among a farmer's most valuable helpers and protected at all seasons. Similar in the good work it does is the meadow-lark. Grasshoppers, caterpillars and cutworms form a large part of its diet, and its vegetable food consists of weed seeds or waste grain.
They eat insects that fly by night and are classed among our most useful birds. Quails are almost unequalled as weed-destroyers. Throughout the fall and winter they spend the time destroying weed seeds. In summer they eat Colorado potato beetles, chinch-bugs, cotton boll-weevils, squash-beetles, grasshoppers and cutworms.
What rest was there in sleep, if all the time one's eyes were closed a man was subconsciously aware that cutworms were devouring his lettuce and that weeds were every instant gaining headway? Even the rhythm of the rain was a reminder that the pea vines were being battered down and that the barn roof was leaking.
"Do you grow cabbages in your garden?" he asked, "or or diamonds?" "How's that?" demanded the other; then as if he had recovered from a momentary surprise, "Oh, a little of both." "Both!" "But but this ain't what you'd call a good year for diamonds. Nope. Too many cutworms." Johnnie wanted to ask if all gardeners wore hairy trousers. Then thought of a subject even more interesting.
=Cutworms.= Of insects most to be feared and of those which attack the plants when they are first set out are cutworms of various species. The grower is as a rule quite too familiar with these insects, and no description of their methods is necessary, beyond the statement that they cut off and destroy more than they eat and re-setting is frequently necessary.
He seldom learned where the day birds slept, for he did not find motionless things. But he knew well enough that mice visited the corn-crib, and where their favorite runways came out into the open. He knew where the cutworms crept out of the ground and feasted o' nights in the farmer's garden. He knew where the big brown beetles hummed and buzzed while they munched greedily of shade-tree leaves.
"It was lucky for them, too, that no guns were fired on the big farm below the grove the crows were there believed to earn the corn they stole by the grubs and cutworms and mice they killed. That was very lucky for the two imps, for they were forever hanging about the farmyard and the big locust trees that ran along the foot of the garden.
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