26 BULLETIN 196, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



F. E. L. Beal (1915a) in a report of an extensive study of the 

 robins' food carefully weighs the benefit that the robin renders man 

 by consuming harmful insects against the birds' depredations upon the 

 fruit in his orchards. In his summary he says: " While the animal 

 food of the robin includes a rather large percentage of useful beetles, 

 it is not in the consumption of these or any other insect that this bird 

 does harm. A bird whose diet contains so large a percentage of fruit, 

 including so many varieties, may at any time become a pest when 

 its natural food fails and cultivated varieties are accessible. While 

 the robin to-day probably is doing much more good than harm, it 

 must be acknowledged 1 that ?the 4 ]bird is potentially harmful." 



Professor Beal (1915a) ^suggests a means by which we can divert 

 the robin's attention from our fruit trees. "For a number of years," 

 he says — 



the writer was engaged in the cultivation of small fruits in Massachusetts, and 

 although robins were abundant about the farm they did no appreciable damage. 

 On the farm where the writer lived when a boy was a fine collection of the choicest 

 varieties of cherries. The fruit first to ripen each year was shared about equally 

 by the birds and the family, but that which matured afterwards did not attract 

 the birds, probably because in that section the woods and swamps abound with 

 many species of wild fruits. 



Reports of depredations upon fruit by birds come principally from the prairie 

 region of the West. This is just what might be expected, for but few prairie 

 shrubs produce the wild berries that the birds prefer and for lack of these the 

 birds naturally feed upon the cultivated varieties available. Reports of fruit 

 losses caused by birds in the East are usually from the immediate vicinity of 

 villages or towns where there is no natural fruit-bearing shrubbery. From this 

 it follows that an effective remedy for the ravages of birds upon cultivated fruits 

 is to plant the preferred wild varieties. 



The following food-bearing trees, shrubs, and herbs appear on his 

 list: Ked cedar, common juniper, bayberry, hackberry, mulberry, 

 pokeberry, sassafras, juneberry (Amelanchier) , spiceberry (Benzoin), 

 mountain-ash, chinaberry, hawthorn, burningbush (Evonymus), 

 woodbine, flowering dogwood, and other cornels and viburnums. 

 Professor Beal also gives a list of over 200 species of insects and 7 

 species of mollusks that have been found in the stomachs of robins. 



W. J. Hamilton, Jr. (1935), during a study of four robins' nests, 

 found that the food fed to the nestlings "during late May and early 

 June consisted principally of cutworms." He says: "From the 

 earliest period these larvae form a prominent share of the menu." 

 Dr. Hamilton continues: 



In order to determine the quantity of food eaten by the young birds, the freshly 

 fed cutworm, adult insects, worms, etc., were occasionally removed from the 

 young with blunt forceps, immediately upon being fed by the parent birds, and 

 immediately weighed. This procedure was inaugurated while the birds were 

 but a day or two old, and continued on alternate days until the young left the 



