RING-NECKED PHEASANT 317 



injurious insects eaten on the one hand and cultivated crops on the 

 other. 



Pheasants are at times very destructive to sprouting corn and even 

 to corn in the ear. They also are known to eat tomatoes, beets, peas, 

 beans, and other farm crops, including grain of all sorts. The 

 stomachs of those shot doing damage in a garden often contain, how- 

 ever, a large number of injurious insect pests as well as many weed 

 seeds. Much of the grain — wheat, oats, rye, barley — eaten by pheas- 

 ants is waste grain that has fallen to the ground during harvesting. 



In summer, according to an unpublished report kindly sent me by 

 Leffingwell, 20.4 per cent of the contents of 11 pheasant stomachs 

 consisted of injurious insects, and insects are consumed almost exclu- 

 sively by the broods of young. Stomach examinations made by vari- 

 ous observers show that grasshoppers, crickets, potato beetles, 

 squash bugs, curculio beetles, and larvae of all kinds, including those 

 of the gypsy and brown-tail moths and including also the tent cater- 

 pillar, are among the items in the food. With the injurious insects, 

 a certain number of beneficial ones are eaten. 



McAtee (1912) records that the stomach of one pheasant contained 

 360 larvae of March flies, Bibio, and another 432. " Twenty-three 

 acorns and 200 pine seeds were taken by the bird who ate the largest 

 amount of mast, and about 800 capsules of chickweed, containing 

 more than 8,000 seeds were in the stomach of the weed-seed 

 eater." McAtee sums up his report as follows : " What is most evi- 

 dent is that pheasants are gross feeders, their capabilities for good 

 or for harm are great. If a number of them attack a crop they are 

 likely to make short work of it, or if they devote themselves to weed 

 seeds or insect pests they do a great deal of good." 



Lefiingwell (1928) says that "in Minnesota, F. D. Blair, the 

 superintendent of game laws, believes that pheasants destroy more 

 mice per bird than do most of the hawks and owls." At the sea- 

 shore, especially when the uplands are covered with snow, pheasants 

 visit the salt marshes, where they probably consume small crusta- 

 ceans and mollusks. 



Clarence Cottam (1929) says: "Except during the coldest winter 

 those stomachs collected at mid-day contained little food material, 

 while those taken in the morning and evening were full or being 

 filled. This suggests that pheasants usually feed during the early 

 morning or late afternoon." 



Paul D. Dalke says in his notes : 



On January 22, 1930, I made a trip to collect pheasants 5 miles south of 

 Ann Arbor, Mich., where the birds are fairly abundant. I flushed one cock 

 pheasant from a field overgrown with wild sweetclover; the cock had traveled 

 only 100 feet from the time he left the roost until 2 p. m. While traveling 

 this 100 feet he had rested three times, as indicated by the hollowed-out forms 



