96 BIRDS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO MAN. 



ing curculios and ground-beetles, and various undetermined 

 species. There Avere also present twenty per cent, of earth- 

 worms, one per cent, of snails, three per cent, of myriapods, 

 and about thirty per cent, of grass blades. The latter seem 

 almost always to be found in the stomachs of nestling robins ; 

 they may be introduced accidentally with the cutworms or 

 possibly may have a dietetic value. 



The food of fourteen nestlings examined by Beat consisted 

 of caterpillars, locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, and beetles, with 

 a few spiders, snails, and earthworms, and seven per cent, of 

 berries of various kinds. 



Professor King found the stomachs of three Wisconsin 

 nestlings to contain wire-worms, white grubs, caterpillars, 

 beetles, small seeds, and grass. Dr. T. M. Brewer watched 

 the feeding of a set of young robins near his house, "and, 

 so far as they were seen, the nestlings were fed until they left 

 their nest entirely with the moths of the family Agrotiidae 

 or subterranean caterpillars, commonly known as cutworms." 

 We suspect he meant to write the larvae of the moths, instead 

 of the moths themselves, although it is known that the latter 

 are sometimes fed to the young. 



In his admirable account of the nesting habits of the robin, ^ 

 Professor Herrick states that the young are fed with grasshop- 

 pers, crickets, katydids, and angle-worms, as Avell as such fruits 

 as choke-cherries, blueberries, and raspberries. Evidently for 

 the nestlings, as for themselves, robins take the kind of food 

 that is most abundant. Years ago Wilson Flagg watched a pair 

 nesting near his house. They were rearing " a second brood 

 in the month of July, when the soil was so greatly parched 

 by drought that if robins lived only on berries and earthworms 

 they must have starved to death. I had often seen the birds 

 at a distance pecking vigorously upon the sward and then 

 drawing out a worm. I knew that there w^ere at this time no 



' Home Life of Wild Birds, chap. iv. 



