446 BULLETIN 191, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



(Membracidae), leaf-hoppers (Jassidae), some jumping plant-lice (Psyllidae), 

 and a considerable number of false chinch bugs (Nysius angustattu), with a 

 few lace-bugs (Tingitidae). 



Other insect food includes beetles, "somewhat over 10 percent," 

 caterpillars, 16 percent, wasps and ants, 1^ percent, and the remainder 

 of animal food, "about 8 percent," consists mainly of spiders. Of the 

 vegetable food, less than 1 percent consists of fruit, pulp and skins, and 

 the remainder is composed of a few seeds, granules of poison-oak, leaf 

 galls, and rubbish, much of which is probably taken accidentally. 



His analysis of the stomach contents of eight nestlings is of interest: 

 "The animal matter comprised, approximately: Beetles 2, wasps 2, 

 bugs 8, caterpillars and pupae 80, and spiders 7 percent. The point of 

 greatest interest, however, lies in the fact that every one of these 

 stomachs contained pupae of the coddling moth, distributed as follows: 

 Two stomachs contained 2 each, two contained 3 each, one contained 4, 

 one 7, one 9, and one 11, making 41 in all, or an average of over 5 to 

 each." 



From the above it will be seen that the bushtit is one of the most 

 useful of the birds of California; it does practically no harm, except to 

 eat a few beneficial ladybugs, in such small numbers as to be negligible, 

 and it destroys immense numbers of the most harmful insects, most of 

 which are so minute that only the microscopic eyes of these little birds 

 could find them ; and the larger birds would not bother to eat them. The 

 great expansion of the fruit-growing industry in California has en- 

 abled these scale insects to increase enormously, and the scale-eating 

 birds have not kept pace with them, so that artificial means must be em- 

 ployed to keep them under control. 



Mr. Scott writes to me: "On January 20, 1917, I was surprised to 

 find a flock of 24 bushtits feeding on ripe olives, both on the trees and 

 on the ground. The birds were evidently hungry, as half a dozen flew 

 to the ground within a few feet of me to peck the meat of the fallen 

 olives, just as the house finches were doing." 



Behavior. — Bushtits are sociable, friendly little birds, not only toward 

 their human neighbors but among themselves, possessing many of the 

 lovable and trustful traits of their relatives the chickadees. They show 

 no fear of man and carry on their vocations with confident indifiference 

 tn his near presence. But they are even fonder of their own society. 

 Except during the short season when the pairs are occupied with their 

 nesting activities, they travel about all through the rest of the year in 

 loose flocks of varying sizes; small bunches of family parties join later 

 into larger groups. I have often enjoyed watching a cloud of these little 

 o-ray, long-tailed birds drifting through the trees and shrubbery on the 

 edge of an arroyo in Pasadena. 



