170 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Food. — Professor Beal (1912) reports on the contents of 11 

 stomachs of Say's phoebe, taken during every month in the year. 

 Animal food made up 99.78 percent and vegetable food 0.22 percent 

 of the whole. Beetles of the three most useful families, Cicindelidae 

 (tiger beetles), Carabidae (predaceous ground beetles), and Cocci- 

 nellidae (ladybirds), amount to 5.95 percent of the food. "This," he 

 says, "is a surprisingly large percentage to be eaten by a flycatcher." 

 Other beetles, either harmful or neutral species, amount to 9.72 percent. 

 Hymenoptera seem to be the largest item of food, 30.72 percent. 

 "They are mostly bees and wasps, with a few ants. No honeybees 

 were found." Hemiptera (bugs) amount to only 4.45 percent, but 

 Diptera (flies), "mostly of the families of the house fly, the crane fly 

 and the robber fly," are more popular, amounting to 16.67 percent. 

 Caterpillars were found in 17 stomachs and moths in 19. "Here for 

 the first time is found a flycatcher that eats more of adults (moths) 

 than it does of the larvae (caterpillars)." Grasshoppers and crickets 

 occurred in 48 stomachs and amount to 15.36 percent of the food. 

 "Dragon flies, spiders, millepeds, and a few sowbugs, together amount 

 to 4.79 percent of the food, and make up the remainder of the animal 

 quota. * * * The vegetable food of Say's phoebe can be dis- 

 missed with a few words. It consists of seeds of elder {Samhucus) 

 contained in 3 stomachs, nightshade {Solanum) in 2, a single seed of a 

 fig in 1, seeds of tarweed {Madia) in 1, and rubbish in 4. Thus it has 

 no economic importance." 



Bendire (1895) says: "I have repeatedly seen it catching good-sized 

 grasshoppers on the wing, as well as different species of beetles, flies, 

 moths, and butterflies. It has a habit similar to the Owls of ejecting 

 the indigestible portions of its food in the shape of pellets. My at- 

 tention was drawn to this fact by observing several such lying on the 

 porch of my quarters at Fort Lapwai, Idaho, where a pair of these 

 birds nested over the door." 



Claude T. Barnes writes to ,me about a Say's phoebe that arrived in 

 the foothills above Salt Lake City, Utah, on February 21, 1939, in 

 the midst of a blizzard of great intensity : "For a week I observed it 

 daily, pitying its fluffed loneliness, as it sat on limbs heavily laden 

 with snow. At last in its hunger it came to a Boston i\^ {Parthen- 

 ocissus tricuspidata) ^ which a western robin had appropriated; and, 

 thereafter, it would flutter, as occasion permitted, to the seeded berries 

 of the ivy, only to be driven away forthwith by the equally doleful 

 robin. During the time that I observed it, the phoebe never made 

 any sound; and, on account of the almost constant snowfall, the ivy 

 was apparently its sole subsistence." 



Behavior. — Major Bendire (1895) writes: 



Its general habits and actions resemble those of the eastern Phoebe ; like it, it 

 is one of the earliest spring migrants to return from its winter haunts, and it 



