86 



THE OSPREY. 



frogs, toads, snakes and even ants are alert to take 

 advantage of its helplessness. While I know of no 

 records of our birds specially seeking dragonflies at 

 such times I cannot believe that they are all neglect- 

 ful of such an opportunity. Perhaps the dragonflies 

 that Beal found in the stomachs of Red-winged 

 Blackbirds (Farmer's Bull. No. 54, 1897, p. 20,) 

 may have been secured at such time and not picked 

 up dead, as he suggests, since his reason, that 

 "They are too 

 active to be taken 

 alive" would not 

 then apply. 



The few obser- 

 vers of the de- 

 struction of drag- 

 onflies by birds 

 have all noted, 

 except in the sin- 

 gle instance 

 quoted, that their 

 wings are not 

 eaten. Wher- 

 ever a brookside 

 path or a bank of 

 a pond has been 

 found strewn 

 with detached 

 dragonfly wings 

 it has been re- 

 ported as the 

 work of birds. 

 Much has been 

 made of this evi- 

 dence — too much 

 in fact, since 

 chipmunks, and 

 even cannibal 

 dragonflies leave the self same evidences of their re- 

 past. I know as a result of fated dragonfly breeding 

 experiments that chipmunks eat the insects in great 

 numbers always rejecting the wings. 



While the adult dragonflies are seen for but a short 

 season, their young are found in the water all the 

 year round. They live in submerged vegetation by 

 trashy banks, in the feeding grounds of many aquatic 

 birds, and occur often in perfectly enormous num- 

 bers. In view of these facts I am much surprised at 

 being unable to find any records of their having been 

 eaten by birds, even though my search of the litera- 

 ture has been somewhat cursory. I have seen these 

 nymphs taken in numbers from the stomachs of the 

 Great Blue and Green Herons. 



This much I have said for the purpose of adding 

 that I think the collector of birds ought to save more 

 than the skins of the birds he kills. If, for instance, 

 a few collectors of aquatic birds in different places 

 would keep a jar of alcohol on the table at which 

 they prepare their bird skins, and would drop into it 

 the stomachs of the birds, each tied in a square of 



Page 



cheese cloth and numbered, with notes to correspond 

 and then would submit this material to competent 

 examiners, our knowledge of the food and feeding 

 habits of our commonest aquatic birds might be in- 

 creased a hundred fold in a single season. I never 

 could bring myself to shoot birds for the sake of 

 getting their stomachs, yet these alone will tell what 

 is eaten. The birds will not let us see what they eat 

 and cannot be made to confess. I should be glad to 



examine stom- 

 achs suspected to 

 contain aquatic 

 insects, especial- 

 ly dragonfly 

 nymphs, and, to 

 the end that any 

 bird collector in- 

 terested may be 

 able to know 

 when these are 

 present I give a 

 figure of their 

 most distinctive 

 structures; fortu- 

 nately, these are 

 also the parts 

 that longest resist 

 digestion. The 

 immense grasp- 

 ing lower lip of 

 two very differ- 

 ent species is 

 shown at A and 

 B : this is folded 

 beneath the head 

 and is perfectly 

 distinctive, no 

 other animal pos- 

 sessing anything like it. The spines at the end of the 

 body are shown at C and D for the same species. 



Those of our birds known to eat adult dragonflies 

 are a few of the smaller hawks (I'id Fisher), the 

 Red-winged Blackbird (Beal), the Kingbird (Hersey 

 Can. Ent. V. 160), the Shrike and the English Spar- 

 row. There is no record to show which of our two 

 hundred and fifty odd species of dragonflies even 

 these eat. Here is a special problem that falls out- 

 side of the province of food studies made for the 

 sake of agriculture. What could be more interest- 

 ing than to study the feeding habits of the birds that 

 frequent the banks of our streams and ponds, and to 

 note the measure of their intelligence as shown in 

 taking advantage of the vicissitudes of the other 

 animals on which they feed ' A ready gun, a good 

 pair of eyes accompanied by a good pair of legs and 

 a lead pencil, are all the equipment necessary : and 

 there is hardly a pond in all the country, where, 

 during the month of June (earlier in the south) one 

 may not find dragonflies of many species transform- 

 ing in numbers every clear morning. 



