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Just in the same way that gulls make free of the wireworms on windswept ploughlands, so in early summer do the old rooks come sweeping down from the elms on the hill that overlooks my fishing ground and take their share of cockles and other muddy fare in the bank uncovered by the falling tide.
It is worth recalling that their diet includes such pests as the Rocky Mountain locust and other injurious grasshoppers, the army worm, cutworms, cabbage worms, cotton worm, cotton cutworm, boll weevil, clover leaf weevil, clover root curculio, rice weevil, corn bill-bugs, wireworms, corn leaf-beetles, cucumber beetles, white grubs, and such foes of stock as the Texas fever tick, horseflies, and mosquitoes.
The rabble of silly little crows have begun to learn sense. The delicate blue iris of their eyes, the sign of a fool-crow, has given place to the dark brown eye of the old stager. They know their drill now and have learned sentry duty. They have been taught guns and traps and taken a special course in wireworms and green-corn.
Gulls also follow the plough in hordes, not always to the complete satisfaction of the farmer, who is, not unreasonably, sceptical when told that they seek wireworms only and have no taste for grain.
"So as not to rouse the wireworms," I nodded. "Yes go on." "The conditions of the game are governed by the necessity of paying due respect to the vegetable hazards. There is only one hole on the course." "If you remember," I said, "I told you long ago that that was all there was room for, but you would persist in making it nine." "The hole," said James, "is the water-butt.
"Meanwhile B. Oriole does a great deal of work, for he is a tireless member of the guilds of Tree Trappers and Ground Gleaners, eating hosts of caterpillars, wireworms, and beetles. When he is very thirsty he does, now and then, take a sip of the fruit he has helped to save, and once in a while he may eat a few green peas. But would any one refuse a mess of peas to a neighbor in the next house?
On the other hand, particularly during the weeks when it is feeding its nestlings, it admittedly devours quantities of wireworms, leathergrubs, and weevils, as well as of couch grass and other noxious weeds, while some of its favourite dainties, such as thistles, walnuts, and acorns, will hardly be grudged at any time.
They are an important element of the latter bird's diet, and no fewer than eight species of them have been found in its food. Wireworms and their adult forms, click beetles, are devoured by the northern phalarope, woodcock, jacksnipe, pectoral sandpiper, killdeer, and upland plover. The last three feed also on the southern corn leaf-beetle and the last two upon the grapevine colaspis.
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