570 TJ.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 23 7 part i 



In the female juvenal plumage olive-brown wings and tail replace 

 the black ones of the male. The first winter plumage, acquired by a 

 molt of similar extent to that of the male, differs in having the head, 

 back, throat, and breast brown instead of black. The earliest record 

 of the first molt I have seen is a female I took near Brunswick, Ga., 

 June 24, 1949, that shows a few buff flank feathers. Adult and 

 young females cannot be distinguished in this plumage. The first 

 nuptial is acquired by wear and the adult winter by a complete post- 

 nuptial molt. Subsequent plumages do not differ, females never 

 assuming the black areas of the male. 



F. W. Davis writes me: "Certainly August is far too late for the 

 onset of the postnuptial molt in Massachusetts. A breeding female 

 banded June 4, 1961, with a well-developed brood patch, wa^s retaken 

 July 4, 1961, and had then molted all her upper tail coverts except the 

 central pair; an adult male taken the same day had shed all his upper 

 taU coverts." 



My own observations indicate that the sequence and method of 

 acquisition (molt or wear) of plumage is the same for the four eastern 

 subspecies. The variations in color with locale have been discussed 

 at some length in an earlier study (Dickinson, 1952). These changes 

 are generally characterized by a marked paling of the flank colors 

 and a lessening of the amount of white at the bend of the wing and 

 at the tips of the outer rectrices in southern latitudes. 



Food. — The towhee is principally a gi-ound feeder, and this is 

 reflected in its diet. W. L. McAtee (1926) comments on the food 

 habits of this species as follows: 



The food of the Chewink consists of a great variety of items, the bird 

 taking apparently almost everything unearthed in its rummaging of the forest 

 floor. About three-tenths of the food is animal matter and seven-tenths vegetable. 

 Of the latter portion seeds, mast, and wild fruits are the important items. The 

 mast consists chiefly of acorns; the favorite seeds are those of ragweed, foxtail 

 grass, smartweed, and dock; and the fruits that are most frequently taken are 

 those of strawberry, huckleberry, blueberry, bayberry, and blackberry. The 

 towhee has very rarely been observed to feed on any agricultural product. 



Beetles are eaten more frequently than any other insects and among them 

 weevils are especially favored. Moths and caterpillars, bugs, and ants are other 

 insect food items of importance. Besides insects numerous spiders and snails, 

 smaller numbers of daddy-long-legs, millipeds, and sowbugs, and a very few small 

 salamanders, lizards, and snakes are consumed. The insects eaten include various 

 agricultural pests such as the potato beetle, plum curculio, strawberry crown 

 girdler, flea beetles, cutworms, striped and spotted cucumber beetles, and the 

 cornfield ant. Pests of trees which are known to be on the bill-of-fare of the 

 chewink embrace nut weevils, bark beetles, adults of round-headed and flat- 

 headed wood borers, leaf beetles including the locust leaf miner, and the variable 

 leaf beetle (Typophorus canellus) which injures mountain ash and butternut 

 among other trees, leaf chafers, junebugs, the goldsmith beetle, the yellow case- 

 bearer {Chlamys plicata) which feeds on the leaves of numerous deciduous trees, 



