78 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



males are decidedly browner, less jet black than adults, and the 

 yellow bill is not acquired until spring. 



Food.— The Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain (1938) in the "Handbook of 

 British Birds" summarizes the food of the blackbird as follows: 



Largely vegetable as well as animal. Very destructive to fruit, especially 

 during drought (apples, pears, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, currants, 

 cherries, figs, etc.). Also takes berries of many species (holly, rowan, rose, haw- 

 thorn, ivy, yew, bird-cherry, blackberry, guelder-rose, Cotoneaster, etc.), seeds of 

 many plants and grain. Besides earthworms, insects, Coleoptera (Aphodius, 

 Otiorrhynchus, Sitona, Agriotes, Carabus, etc.), Diptera (larvae of Tipulidae), 

 Lepidoptera (Noctuidae, Bombyx, etc. and larvae), Hymenoptera (Bombus, ants, 

 Ichneumonidae, gall-insects (Neuroterus), etc.), and Trichoptera. Spiders, milli- 

 pedes, and small Mollusca (Helix, Zonites, Cochlicopa, and occasionally slugs), 

 and small frog and stranded minnow recorded as brought to nest. 



Tadpoles have also been recorded and in one case were even seen 

 fed to the young. 



Partly on account of the damage that, it must be admitted, it does 

 in fruit gardens the food of the blackbird has been studied a good 

 deal. Collinge (1927) in England carried out an extensive investiga- 

 tion involving the examination of the stomach contents of 285 adults. 

 His results showed that 39 percent (by bulk) of the total food was of 

 an animal nature and 61 percent vegetable. The former figure was 

 made of 31 percent insects (subdivided, perhaps a little arbitrarily, 

 into injurious 22 percent, beneficial 3.5 percent, and neutral 5.5 per- 

 cent), 4 percent earthworms, 2.5 percent slugs and snails, and 1.5 per- 

 cent miscellaneous animal matter; the latter of 25.5 percent cultivated 

 fruits, 2.5 percent wheat, 2.5 percent roots, and 24.5 percent wild 

 fruits and seeds, and 6 percent miscellaneous vegetable matter. 



Collinge's conclusion was that the blackbird was too numerous in 

 Britain and should be reduced. More recently (1941) he has pub- 

 lished the results of a further study based on material obtained from 

 two areas in successive years. Since the date of his earlier work the 

 blackbird, though still plentiful, appears to have undergone a distinct 

 decrease, partly as a result of some exceptionally severe weather in 

 winter, and the analysis shows, at any rate for the areas in question, 

 a quite considerable change as compared with the earlier results. The 

 quantity of cultivated fruit and fruit pulp taken shows a drop from 

 25.5 percent to 15.2 percent and injurious insects a rise from 22 per- 

 cent to 30.5 percent. 



Behavior. — The blackbird is an alert and wary species rather than 

 really shy, though away from habitations where it has had little oppor- 

 tunity of growing accustomed to human beings even the latter adjec- 

 tive might often be used with justice. It is also highly excitable. At 

 the slightest alarm it dashes off with a shrill volley of alarm notes, 

 startling all the birds in the vicinity, and no other species is so much 



