320 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



Calif., often in hundreds. Available insect specimens turned up by 

 the plow were few, and the great majority of individuals were larvae of 

 the wire worms Limonius californicus and Melanotus longulus, both 

 serious agricultural pests." 



Observers have reported seeing the bird turn over chips of dry cow- 

 dung in pastures. Linsdale (1938) writes of a male that "turned over 

 pieces of cow manure with its head and looked beneath them for food." 

 I have watched this action a number of times. It is usually accom- 

 plished by the bird putting its bill beneath the chip and flipping it 

 over; sometimes the bird nudges the dung forward as it lifts, thus over- 

 turning it. The bird inspects both the newly exposed ground and the 

 underside of the chip and takes food from both places. One piece of 

 manure turned over measured 98 by 70 by 30 millimeters and weighed 

 33.85 grams. Sometimes the birds poke vigorously into horse manure, 

 flipping pieces aside with the bill. They turn over other objects such 

 as small pieces of wood, clods of earth, and even small stones. One 

 piece of wood overturned by a blackbird measured 95 by 45 by 13 

 millimeters. Occasionally the bird thrusts its bill underneath and 

 then opens the bill to pry the object up, overturning it with a forward 

 and upward motion. One bird enlarged a hole in soft mud by inserting 

 the closed bill and then opening the bill. It then picked something 

 out of the hole. Once a male bird was seen digging vigorously into 

 the turf of a golf course, pulling out bits of dirt which it flicked off the 

 bill; finally it pulled out a whitish object about 50 millimeters long, 

 possibly an insect larva. 



La Rivers (1941) describes the method of eating Mormon crickets 

 as follows: 



The Brewer's assault upon the cricket is confined entirely to the females, which 

 the birds covet for their eggs. These they take by splitting the dorsum of the 

 abdomen transversely along the soft membranous tissue between the sclerites, a 

 feat accomplished by grasping one end of the body in the bill, the other in a claw, 

 and tugging; some go to less trouble and merely tear the head off, pulling with it 

 the entire abdominal, and much of the thoracic, contents, which are all consumed. 

 An unexplained habit of these birds is their snipping off of the female cricket's 

 ovipositor, something they quite frequently do. 



I have observed blackbirds feeding in water that reached as high 

 as the belly feathers. Semiaquatic feeding has been very well de- 

 scribed by Richardson (1947): 



Manzanita Lake on the campus of the University of Nevada has extensive 

 growths of the water-weed Anacharis canadensis. Each year by the end of May 

 the new growth of this plant forms a dense mat an inch or less below the water 

 surface. For several years now both Red-winged (Agelaius phoeniceus) and 

 Brewer (Euphagus cyanocephalus) blackbirds that nest in the vicinity of the lake 

 have been observed feeding on insects associated with the waterweed. The 

 blackbirds alight on the plants, the water usually coming to the middle or upper 

 part of the birds' tarsometatarsi. Typically, the wings are then fluttered as the 



