Food and Water 147 



For the adults, the animal food amounts to less than one per cent 

 (in New York six-tenths of one per cent) of the total food. In the 

 summer it exceeds the annual average, ranging from one per cent 

 to three per cent in New York, and highest in the Adirondacks ( Dar- 

 row). Occasionally insects will exceed one per cent of the food in 

 spring or fall too. 



Smyth examined four May-June chick stomachs and found sLxty- 

 six and nine-tenths per cent of the food to be insects and their 

 relatives; in three July stomachs the proportion was only eleven 

 per cent. One August stomach contained ten per cent animal food. 

 Judd ( 1905 ) reported on four chicks less than one-quarter grovm, 

 the stomach contents of which were found to be ninety-five per cent 

 insects, while seven adults taken at the same season contained only 

 thirty per cent of insects. 



Judd's adult records are very notable in that he found insects and 

 related animal life to constitute ten and nine-tenths per cent of total 

 food (including Coleoptera— four and six-tenths per cent; Lepidop- 

 tera larvae one and two-tenths per cent; Orthoptera eight-tenths of 

 one per cent ) . This is the more unusual because a great majority of 

 the birds were taken during the cold months. Possibly the grouse 

 were more insectivorous formerly, but this does not seem likely. 

 Other fall and winter records are in marked contrast, insects ranging 

 from one and eight-tenths per cent of the October food (Smyth) 

 and one and four-tenths per cent of fall food in New England ( Gross ) 

 to a mere trace of the winter food in New York (Kelso). Kuhn 

 (1940) lists animal food as amomiting to thirteen-hundredths per 

 cent of the November food in Pennsylvania. Nelson found only 

 seven-hundredths per cent in November-December stomachs in 

 Virginia. Smyth gave the November insect diet as totaling eight- 

 tenths per cent of food taken, but he found none at all in stomachs 

 collected from December through March. 



Occasional Foods. The kinds of plant and animal foods acceptable 

 to the ruflPed grouse are without doubt more numerous than pres- 

 ently recorded. The New York investigation is continuing its study 

 of the grouse food habits and finds new food items with each new 

 season's collections. The list of foods now known to be taken will 

 be considerably enlarged with more study, but the importance of the 

 newly discovered items is likely to be slight (see Tables 5 and 6). 



