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Title
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The Omaha Bird Room
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Date
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1903
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Creator
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Frank Shoemaker
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Description
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Frank Shoemaker - Omaha, Lincoln, and Nebraska Narratives
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Identifier
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321301
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Transcription
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[Page 8] 6 shreds of lettuce. In the autumn, bittersweet-berries, coral-berries, and wild grapes, are acceptable. A hard-boiled egg, crushed very fine with a fork and sprinkled with red pepper, is a good appetizer. In summer-time insects are easily procured; a few sweeps with a butterfly net among the clover or weed-tops will furnish a fine supply of grasshoppers, moths, beetles, spiders, flies, bugs, and larvae. There is a wild scramble when the out-turned net with this wealth of goodies is placed on the floor. Grubs and larvae are great dainties. Cockroaches from logs in a small wooded lot near by are relished. Not one of the birds at present in the room will have anything to do with angle-worms -the robin's specialty. Large decumbent weeds such as purslane and prostrate amaranth are carefully lifted and carried into the bird-room, and as they teem with insect life they are earnestly investigated. "Meal-worms" -the larval form of certain tenebrionid beetles -are sold by bird-stones at fifty cents per hundred, and are of great value in restoring an insectivorous bird which goes "off its feed" in the winter. We started our own colonies of these "worms" in screened pails of mixed flour, bran and corn meal in the basement, and the present population runs into the thousands. We are probably the wormiest householders in the county; but we carry the unadvertised honor modestly.
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Rights
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To inquire about usage, please contact Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. These images are for educational use only. Not all images are available for publication.
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Is Version Of
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image-299.jpg
The Omaha Bird Room