HOUSE FINCH. 21 



by which the California fruit grower may protect his orchards from 

 the attack of the linnet — namely, by planting around orchards shrubs 

 and trees the fruit of which will serve to attract birds away from 

 the marketable kinds. There are many fruit-bearing shrubs and 

 trees whose jDroducts, while worthless to man, are likely to prove more 

 attractive to linnets than are the orchard fruits. That linnets will 

 eat wild fruit apj^ears from the fact that elderberries (Sambucus) 

 were found in 49 stomachs, and their apparent partiality for culti- 

 vated fruits is readily explained by the fact that usually they are 

 the only kinds obtainable. 



FOOD OF YOUNG LINNETS. 



Of the 1,206 stomachs of linnets included in this investigation, 46 

 were those of young ))irds taken from the nest. The young vary in 

 age from birds 2 day's old to those nearly ready to fly. In order to 

 ascertain the exact ditference, if any, between the food of the nes- 

 tlings and that of the adults, the contents of these 46 stomachs were 

 tabulated by themselves and the percentages of the various items of 

 food calculated. The results show 2.4 percent of animal food to 

 97.6 of vegetable. The animal food consists mostly of the larvae of 

 a minute beetle which lives on decayed fruit, with a few plant-lice 

 and one small fragment of a grasshopper, the only one found in any 

 of the stomachs. The vegetable food consists entirely of weed seed, 

 the most important of which are the following : Sunflower, bur weed, 

 milk thistle, and poison oak. (See PI. II, figs. 6, 8, 9.) 



No fact connected with the food habits of the linnet is more sur- 

 prising than this. The great body of the fringilline birds, though 

 subsisting largely and in most cases almost entirely upon vegetable 

 food in adult life, feed their young i)i the early stage of existence 

 almost exclusively upon insects or other animal food, and begin to 

 give them vegetable food only when nearly ready to leave the nest. 

 It is doubtful if there is anexcej^tion to this rule so pronounced as the 

 linnet. As calculated, the nestlings ate actually less animal food than 

 their parents, but the difference is so small that it may be accidental. 



ECONOMIC PLACE OF THE LINNET. 



Admitting, as we must, that the orchardist has just grounds of 

 complaint against the linnet on account of depredations upon fruit, 

 the bird's claim to favorable consideration must rest upon its valuable 

 services as a consumer of weed seed and upon its esthetic value. It 

 is trim and pretty, has a sweet song, and in many ways is a pleasing 

 adjunct of rural life — in fact, many Californians believe that the 

 linnet, in spite of its sins of commission and omission, should be 



