It can capture moths and cockchafers on the wing, and will eat indeed almost anything, acting also like others of its congeners as a scavenger of the foreshores.
It is a terror to Larks as well as Swallows, but it does some good in reducing the numbers of cockchafers and dragonflies, which are favourite articles of its diet, with other small insects.
It is true that when there is a great abundance of cockchafers it consumes a great quantity of these creatures; but as soon as it finds something it likes better, and is easily obtained, he leaves the destructive chafers to others.
It feeds on insects of various kinds, particularly on cockchafers and other winged beetles, part of which, however, it always throws away.
In the year 1688 great numbers ofCockchafers appeared on the hedges and trees of the south-west coast of the county of Galway, in clusters of thousands, clinging to each others’ backs, in the manner of bees when they swarm.
It was the big cockchafers we had for a year or so that decided her.
But it was not this that made the teller of the story stop and gaze with astonishment; it was the use to which the cockchafers were put.
That a snail-eater should criticise gipsies for eatingcockchafers shows what creatures of prejudice we all are.
Moths and cockchafers and dragon-flies innumerable flew to the lotus on the lake.
But the Poet was not happy, for moths came by the score to the light of his taper; not moths only, but cockchafers and dragon-flies with their wings rainbow-tinted.
Then, oh, little children of the night, there was a swift whirr of wings, for the moths and the cockchafers and the dragon-flies innumerable swiftly departed upon the Fire Quest.
But the moths and the cockchafers and the dragon-flies paid no heed to the words of the Wise Poet.
The moths and the cockchafers and the dragon-flies fluttered about the taper and paid him no heed.
In May and June large numbers of cockchafers fall victims to it, and in July and August in Kent and Sussex it plays havoc with the local Brown-tail Moth.
Though thecockchafers are a temptation, I will stop here.
The cockchafers boomed as they circled over the enclosure in their long, swift flight.
The voices of the serfs insensibly dropped, and made low murmurs, no louder than the sounds of the cockchafers and long-mailed water-flies that now boomed and danced over the fen.
The cockchafers and their near allies belong to the subfamily Melolonthinae, and the rose-chafers to the Cetoniinae; in both the beetles eat leaves, and their grubs spend a long life underground devouring roots.
When older, she would take cockchafersand beetles, and stick pins through them.
Then he flew down with her from the tree, and placed her on a daisy, and she wept at the thought that she was so ugly that even the cockchafers would have nothing to say to her.
After a time, all the cockchafers turned up their feelers, and said, "She has only two legs!
The gnats danced round them, and the cockchafers cried "Buz, buz.
The whole effect of the crawling was lost, however, because the emperor became impatient at last, rose, made the cockchafers rise, and conversed in English with one of them.
The spectacle resembled a troop ofcockchafers on a carpet.
The gnats danced round them, and the cockchafers cried "Buzz, buzz.
They stared at her, and then the young ladycockchafers turned up their feelers and said, "She has only two legs!
Then he flew down with her from the tree and placed her on a daisy, and she wept at the thought that she was so ugly that even the cockchafers would have nothing to say to her.
After a time all the cockchafers who lived in the tree came to pay Thumbelina a visit.
Whether the cockchafers obeyed his Lordship's orders, is not handed down to posterity.
In 1481, cockchafers committed great ravages in the Grisons.
In certain years cockchafers multiply in such a frightful manner that they devastate the whole vegetation of a country.
It is only early in the morning, and at sunset, that one sees the cockchafers fluttering round the trees which they frequent.
In 1479, the cockchafers having occasioned a famine in the country, were cited before the ecclesiastical tribunal of Lausanne.
To present an idea of the prodigious extent to which cockchafers increase under certain circumstances, we will give a few statistics:--In 1574, these insects were so abundant in England that they stopped many mills on the Severn.
It has been tried to make use ofcockchafers in industrial arts.
In fact, all these animals together do not destroy the hundredth part of the cockchafers which are born every year.
We see that the habit of martyrising cockchafers is of very early date.
Cockchafers make their appearance from the month of April, if the season is warm.
And so the condemned cockchaferscontinued to live on Swiss land, without appearing mindful of the condemnation which had been fulminated against them.
They followed it very closely, so closely that they were on and over the Cockchafers before they could organize any kind of defence.
The Cockchafers came out dazed, and gave themselves up mostly without a show of fighting.
It tells how theCockchafers come out in the spring and how the children sing when they come.
And at that moment a flight of cockchafers seemed to sweep down the road.
This story of the cockchafer became a family jest, and later on, after my mother had had four children, I remembered that when cockchafers were referred to she would laugh and say: "No!
I remember coming in from the garden one day with a little basket full of cockchafers that I had found, and running to show them to maman.
That they occasionally caught moths or cockchafers seems, in itself, likely, but I never had reason to suppose that these were their particular quarry.
For if moths and cockchafers are the bird’s principal food, why should it not bring these to the young, in the ordinary way?
Tschudi, a careful traveller, who has explored Switzerland in its smallest details, assures us that at the breath of the south wind, which melts the snow in twelve hours, innumerable hosts of cockchafers ravage the country.
When they emerged from the chapel the sun had set, the skyline of the downs lay low and almost cold, and cockchafers were whirring blindly among the sticky tops of the conifers along the chapel path.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "cockchafers" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
