BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEE 327 



becoming paler or largely disappearing and some of the white edgings 

 in the wings and tail wearing away.] 



Food. — Qarence M. Weed (1898), after a careful investigation of 

 the winter food of the chickadee, states : "The results as a whole show 

 that more than half of the food of the chickadee during the winter 

 months consists of insects, a very large proportion of these being taken 

 in the form of eggs. About five per cent, of the stomach cpntents con- 

 sisted of spiders or their eggs. Vegetation of various sorts made up 

 a little less than a quarter of the food, two-thirds of which, however, 

 consisted of buds and bud scales that were believed to have been acci- 

 dentally introduced along with plant-lice eggs." In his conclusion he 

 says: "The investigations * * * show that the chickadee is one of the 

 best of the farmer's friends, working throughout the winter to subdue 

 the insect enemies of the farm, orchard, and garden." 



W. L. McAtee (1926), writing of the chickadee's food throughout 

 the year, says : 



About three-tenths of the food of the Chickadee is vegetable, and seven-tenths 

 animal. Mast and wild fruits supply the bulk of the vegetable food. The mast 

 is derived chiefly from coniferous trees, and the favorite wild fruits are the 

 wax-covered berries of bayberry and poison ivy. A good many blueberries also 

 are eaten, but only limited numbers of other wild fruits and seeds. 



The important things in the animal food of the Qiickadees, in order, are 

 caterpillars and eggs of lepidoptera, spiders, beetles, true bugs of various kinds, 

 and cmts, sawflies, and other hymenoptera. The Chickadee certainly consumes 

 a great many spiders (which are moderately useful), but the occurrence seems 

 inseparably connected with the bird's mode of feeding, ever prying as it does, 

 under bark scales and into all sorts of crannies which are the favorite hiding 

 places of spiders. It is just these methods, however, that enables the Chickadee 

 to find so many of the eggs of injurious lepidoptera and plant lice, and scale 

 insects and other minute pests, the consumption of which is so praiseworthy. The 

 good the bird does in consuming these tiny terrors is so great that we must 

 regard as far outweighed, the harm done in feeding upon spiders and parasitic 

 hymenoptera. * * * 



Codling moths and their larvae and pupae, the larvae, chrysalids, and adults 

 of the gypsy and browntail moths, birch, willow, and apple plant lice, and pear 

 psylla, and various scale insects are eaten by the Chickadee. Among these scales 

 are one affecting dogwood (Lecanium corni), the black-banded scale (Eulecanium 

 nigrofasciatum) which is quite injurious to maples, the scurfy elm scale (Chionaspis 

 americana), and the oyster scale (Lepidosaphes iihni), which attacks many trees 

 and has been known to kill ashes and poplars in New York. 



Among other forest pests attacked by our friend the Chickadee are the flat- 

 headed and round-headed wood borers, leaf beetles, the white pine weevil, nut 

 weevils, bark beetles, tree hoppers, spittle insects, cicadas, leaf hoppers, and 

 sawflies. Other food items of the bird include a variety of beetles, bugs, flies, 

 and grasshoppers, and a few stone flies, dragon flies, daddy-long-legs, millipeds, 

 snails, and small amphibians. 



Dr. Dickey (MS.) writes to Mr. Bent: "I have noticed that chickadees 



