How Much Do Birds Eat?How much do birds eat?
Robert Kennicott found that a single pair of house wrens carry to their young each day as many as 1000 insects and insect-eggs. Owen fed a hermit thrush half its weight of beefsteak per day and the young thrush thrived and asked for more. Weed and Dearborn observed an old pair of robins for two hours, during which time they brought to their young 1 cherry, 1 cricket, 1 cater-pillar, 1 moth, 1 harvest man, 1 tumble bug, 2 earthworms, 2 carabid beetles, 29 grasshoppers, and 8 small insects, or animals thought to be spiders. Nash fed a young robin from 50 to 75 cut-worms each day for over two weeks. A family of young sparrows received, in sixty-seven minutes, 7 grasshopper nymphs and 2 spiders. Four chipping sparrows devoured 37 grasshoppers in less than one and one-half hours. Professor Brunner tells us there were found in the stomach of one quail the remains of 101 potato beetles, and in another 500 chinch bugs. The stomachs of four chickadees contained 1028 eggs of the canker worm. The
