GAMBEL'S WREN-TIT 87 



the alarm note of their parents with frozen silence, and it is next to 

 impossible to locate them. They also move with such facility that they 

 cannot be taken. By the fifth day they move with as much skill and 

 ease as the adults. By the time the young are 30 to 35 days old they 

 are probably securing some food for themselves, but still beg from and 

 are fed by their parents. A week later they scold as do the adults. By 

 the time they are 9 or 10 weeks old they are no longer dependent on 

 the adults and wander or possibly are driven, from the adults' territory. 



Plv/mages. — The young at hatching are without down and the only 

 vestige of a down plumage that ever develops is the 2- to 3-millimeter 

 neossoptiles on the tips of the rectrices. 



[Author's note: Ridgway (1904) says that the young are "similar 

 to adults but texture of plumage looser, color of pileum and hindneck 

 less grayish (concolor with that of back) and that of under parts 

 duller and grayer." A small young bird in my collection, of the sub- 

 species henshawi^ in juvenal plumage, fits the above description, ex- 

 cept that the under parts are more buffy than in the adults, "pinkish 

 buff." 



The postnuptial molt of adults, and apparently the postjuvenal molt 

 of young birds, occur mainly in August, though some young birds 

 may molt earlier in the season. I have seen adults in worn plumage 

 up to August 10, others that were still molting on September 10, 

 and still others that had nearly or quite completed the molt on 

 September 3.] 



.Food. — The wren-tit's diet consists of insects, which are taken all 

 the year but in great abundance during spring and summer, and small 

 fruits, which are taken when available, principally during fall and 

 winter. F. E. L. Beal's (1907) study of 165 stomachs sTiows that, of 

 the 48 percent of vegetable food taken, 36 percent consisted of elder- 

 berries, snowberries, coffeeberries, twinberries, blackberries, and the 

 fruit of poison oak. The poison-oak berries, which remain in an 

 edible condition on the bushes for a long time, made up a fourth of 

 the diet from August to February. I have seen all of these fruits 

 eaten and in addition thimbleberries, huckleberries, and toyonberries. 

 The insect food that Beal found to make up 52 percent of the food con- 

 sisted of 23 percent ants and small wasps, 10 percent beetles, 8 percent 

 caterpillars, 7 percent bugs, principally scales, 2 percent spiders, a 

 few flies, and in one case each the remains of a grasshopper and a wood- 

 cricket. I successfuly kept wren-tits in captivity on a diet consisting 

 of mixtures for soft -billed birds, banana, cottage cheese, lettuce, bread 

 crumbs, and occasional live insects and wild berries. The young are 

 fed principally on caterpillars, spiders and their cocoons and eggs, 

 leafhoppers and other bugs, and small beetles. I have also seen adults 

 come to a feeding table and get bread crumbs to feed their nestlings 

 and fledglings. 



