272 BULLETIN 17 9, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Apparently young birds become practically adnlt during their 

 first winter or the following spring, perhaps by a complete or partial 

 prenuptial molt. 



Adults have a complete postnuptial molt, beginning late in August 

 or in September but chiefly accomplished after the birds have mi- 

 grated. They may have a partial prenuptial molt before they come 

 north, but we have no specimens to show it.] 



Food.—\N^\^o L. McAtee (1926) states: 



The food of the Wood Pewee is almost exclusively derived from the animal 

 kingdom, only a little more than one per cent of it being vegetable. This con- 

 sists almost entirely of wild fruits such as those of elder, blackberry, dogwood 

 and poke-berry. Spiders and millipeds are eaten regularly but in small quan- 

 tities, comprising only a little over two per cent of the whole subsistence. 

 Besides the items mentioned the remainder of the food of the Wood Pewee 

 consists entirely of insects. The more important groups are flies (about 30 

 per cent of the total food), hymenoptera (28 per cent), beetles (14 per cent), 

 lepidoptera (12 per cent), bugs (6 per cent), and grasshoppers (3 per cent). 

 Among forest pests consumed by the Wood Pewee are carpenter ants, tussock 

 and gipsy moths, and cankerworms, click beetles, leaf chafers, adults of both 

 tlat-headed and round-headed wood borers, leaf beetles, nut weevils, bark 

 beetles, and tree hoppers * * * The Wood Pewee consumes also various use- 

 ful insects, as parasitic wasps, ladybird beetles, and certain others, but on the 

 whole is a very good friend of the woodlot. 



F. E. L. Beal (1912), basing his conclusions "upon the examination 

 of 359 stomachs taken in 20 States of the Union, the District of 

 Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia," says in his 

 summary : 



The one point most open for criticism in the food of the wood pewee is 

 that it eats too many parasitic Hymenoptera. There is no doubt that all birds 

 which prey upon Hymenoptera at all destroy some of the useful species, but the 

 proportion in the food of this bird is greater than in other birds whose food 

 has been investigated. As these insects are for the most part smaller than 

 the more common wasps and bees, it would seem natural that they should be 

 preyed upon most by the smaller flycatchers, which very likely acounts for the 

 fact that the wood pewee eats more of them than the kingbirds. But even 

 so the bird does far more good than harm. The loss of the viseful Hymenoptera 

 can be condoned when it is remembered that with them the bird takes so many 

 harmful or annoying species. 



Walter Bradford Barrows (1912) says: "The food consists verj 

 largely of insects taken on the wing, yet it not infrequently liovers 

 before a twig or leaf and snaps up small insects which appear to be 

 stationary, sometimes descending to the grass for this purpose. * * * 

 In Nebraska Professor Aughey found seven grasshoppers and many 

 other insects in the single specimen which he examined." 



As we watch a wood pewee feeding — dashing out from its perch 

 repeatedly, often among the interstices of forest trees where the light 

 is not over strong — we are impressed by the large number of very 



