CALIFORNIA THEASHEK. 55 



elusive as to the elements of its preferred diet. It is evident that it 

 is fond of fruit, and where almndant the l)ird ma}' become a menace 

 to the orchard and vineyai'd. 



CALIFORNIA THRASHER. 



{To-roxloiiKi roiVirlnt.) 



Thrashers are eminently l)irds of the underbrush. AVhile they 

 occasionally alight on trees at some height from the ground, they 

 are more frequently seen imder bushes or skulking out of sight in 

 some almost impenetrable thicket of briars. When, however, the 

 thrasher wakes in the morning and feels his soul overflowing with 

 song, he perches on the topmost twig of a tree and lets the world 

 know that he is there and believes that life is worth living. 



The food of the thrasher is obtained on or near the ground. The 

 long curved bill of the California species is probably used much as 

 many birds use their claws to dig among dead leaves and other rub- 

 bish for insects. The bird is not fastidious in its diet, and examina- 

 tion of the stomachs reveals a good many bits of dead leaves, rotten 

 wood, plant stems, which are carelessly taken along with more 

 nutritious morsels. 



An examination of 82 stomachs of this species shows that vegetable 

 food exceeds the animal in the proportion of 59 to 41. In the eastern 

 species {T. rufion) the ratio is 3G to 64. This result is rather sur- 

 prising, for, as a general rule, California birds eat a larger propor- 

 tion of animal food than do the most nearly related eastern species. 



AniTnal food. — As the thrasher is eminently a ground forager it 

 would naturally be expected to find and eat many ground-living bee- 

 tles. Of these the Carabida^ are the most important, owing to their 

 predaceous habits; so a separate account of this family was kept. 

 The result shows that they enter the food of the thrasher to the extent 

 only of 3.8 percent, while all other beetles amount to nearly (> percent. 

 Of these, the darkling beetles (Tenebrionida^) are the most numerous, 

 and the May beetles (Scarabseidse) next. But very few weevils or other 

 species that live on trees or foliage were found. Of all the insects, 

 Hymenoptera are the most abundant, as they are also the most con- 

 stant element of the thrasher's food. About half of these are ants, 

 the rest wasps and bees. Ants naturally are the insects most often 

 found by this bird, as many species live on the ground and among 

 rubbish and rotten wood. The occurrence in the food of wasps and 

 bees, on the contrary, is somewhat of a surprise, as they are mostly 

 sun-loving insects more often found on flowers or the leaves of trees 

 than under bushes or thickets where the thrasher delights to forage. 

 Together they make up something more than 12 percent of the food 



