410 V. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



bronzed grackles prey upon rice in company with other blackbirds and 

 bobolinks. 



Fruit is eaten in every month from March to December, but it 

 does not become important until "in June, July and August it reaches 

 7, 13, and 10 percent respectively." The fruits of economic interest 

 are blackberries, raspberries, cherries, currants, grapes, and apples. 

 Blackberries and raspberries, the favorites, make up the bulk of the 

 fruit eaten. The vast majority of the fruits eaten are wild and hence 

 are not important from the standpoint of man's interests. 



Weed seeds are freely eaten, especially during the colder months 

 reaching a maximum of 11 percent in October. Chestnuts, acorns, 

 and beechnuts form an important item of the food in the fall and 

 early spring months. 



Mr. A. W. Schorger (1941) has found that the bronzed grackle 

 feeds freely on acorns, aided by a special ridge or keel located on the 

 palate. We found the birds successfully opened small acorns of the 

 yellow, Hill's scarlet, bur and pin oaks, but the normal acorn of the 

 white and northern oak were too large to be manipulated. Attempts 

 to open small acorns of the white oak were seldom successful due to 

 the toughness of the shell. No fragments of the shell are eaten but 

 the entire kernel is swallowed. Miscellaneous mineral substances 

 such as sand, gravel, pieces of brick, bits of mortar, plaster of Paris, 

 coal, cinders, etc., are eaten by the grackle to assist in grinding the 

 food. 



According to Beal, (1900) the food of 456 young collected from 

 May 22 to June 30, inclusive, was made up of 74.4 percent animal 

 and 25.6 percent vegetable matter. The animal food of the young 

 is chiefly insects, amounting to 70 percent of the total food. During 

 the first few days the young are fed chiefly on spiders and soft bodied 

 insects in the form of larvae or grubs. Grasshoppers and crickets 

 are a common food of the young, and as they grow older, hard shelled 

 insects such as beetles are included in their diet. 



Ira N. Gabrielson (1922) in the course of a study of a nesting colony 

 of bronzed grackles near Marshalltown, Iowa, found the parent birds 

 were flying to a partially inundated pastureland to secure cutworms, 

 earthworms, crickets, spiders, tumble bugs, ground beetles, and 

 other insects that had migrated into the short grass on little knolls 

 to escape the high water. There were 16 nests and each of the 32 

 parents made an average of 6 trips for food per hour. At one nest 

 observed from a blind, Mr. Gabrielson witnessed 33 feedings during 

 the course of 7 hours. He saw the adults deliver 12 earthworms, 9 

 crickets, 60 cutworms, 2 spiders, 2 kernels of corn, and 7 unknown 

 insects which were taken from the bountiful source in the pastureland. 



The vegetable food of the young consists chiefly of corn and fruit 



