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Updated: June 11, 2025
Thus the investigation of the operations of insectivorous plants, embodied in the work on that topic published in 1875, was started fifteen years before, by a passing observation made during one of Darwin's rare holidays. "In the summer of 1860, I was idling and resting near Hartfield, where two species of Drosera abound; and I noticed that numerous insects had been entrapped by the leaves.
Acad. Nat. Sc. Philadelphia, 2nd Series, vol. ii., 1853, p. 259. A relation of this bird, the Colaptes mexicanus, does not yield to him in economy and skill. He places his barn in the interior of a plant which is very abundant in the zone he inhabits. Insectivorous during a part of the year, he is forced to renounce this diet during the dry season.
Otherwise they differ in many respects some being carnivorous, others graminivorous, others insectivorous, and so on. In fact, among them we have forms analogous to almost all the different groups of ordinary mammalia.
From the beginning, their efforts have tended especially toward the preservation of the non-game birds, and it is well that the song and other insectivorous birds have thus been specially championed. Unfortunately, however, if that policy is pursued exclusively, it leaves 154 very important species of game birds practically at the mercy of the Army of Destruction!
The increase of these flies, numerous as they are, must be habitually checked by some means, probably by birds. We began this series by insectivorous birds, and we had ended with them. Not that in Nature the relations can ever be as simple as this.
The greater number of small birds that remain in northern latitudes during winter, except the Woodpeckers and their congeners, are such as subsist chiefly upon seeds. Those insectivorous species that gather their food chiefly from the ground are under a particular necessity of migrating.
The effect on the insects must have been still greater, for six insectivorous birds were very common in the plantations, which were not to be seen on the heath; and the heath was frequented by two or three distinct insectivorous birds.
Of omnivorous birds, sixteen or eighteen species, among which is the Raven, which here takes the place of the Crow, the two species not being able to live together, as the stronger robber drives away the weaker. Of the insectivorous birds, some sixty or seventy species are found here, among which is the Mocking-Bird, in the middle and southern districts.
Small quadrupeds frequenting trees, and feeding on insects, would be those most likely both to be drifted away from their native lands and to find fit food in a new one. Insectivorous mammals, like in size to those found in the Trias and the Stonesfield slate, might naturally be looked for as the pioneers of the higher vertebrata.
The work that has been done by the Bureau in determining the economic value or lack of value of our most important species of insectivorous birds, has been worth millions to the agricultural interests of the United States. Through it we know where we stand.
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