24 LEAFHOPPERS AFFECTING CEREALS, ETC. 
herons, ete.—since they usually frequent places where these insects 
are not abundant, 
A few records occur for snipe and sandpiper and one for the spotted 
sandpiper indicating that this latter bird may feed quite extensively 
on leafhoppers—probably species occurring on grasses in marshy 
ground. 
Of the grouse family, the habits of which would seem to make them 
fitted to secure some portion of jassid food, only a very few records show 
such diet. Out of 75 prairie chickens, now no longer a factor except 
for the plains region, only one had eaten jassids; but the one taken 
on a Nebraska prairie in October had jassid material for 40 per cent 
of its stomach contents. This would show distinct ability to feed 
on these insects when available. For the common quail or bobwhite, 
whose wide distribution and frequent abundance make it perhaps 
of greater interest for this family, out of 971 stomachs only 35 con- 
tained jassid fragments, and for these they constituted only a very 
small percentage of the food, usually from 1 to 7 per cent. What the 
quail might do, however, in the case of an abundance of material of the 
larger species is shown in a series of stomachs from Virginia, taken 
in autumn, which included numbers of Oncometopia lateralis. 
For the partridge (Bonasa umbellus), one bird out of 423 had eaten 
one leafhopper (a tettigonid) or 1 per cent—a food ratio for the 
species of 1 to 42,300, but so far as open fields are concerned this bird 
is naturally not to be considered of importance. 
We would not expect the larger birds of prey, hawks, owls, etc., to 
feed at all on such small insects, so it may be considered merely 
accidental that the Cooper’s hawk, one bird out of 109, had eaten a 
froghopper (a cercopid), which constituted one-twentieth of its stomach 
contents. Possibly, too, this was contained in the stomach of some 
other animal eaten by the hawk and, being less easily disintegrated 
in the process of digestion, remained as a fragment in the stomach. 
The woodpeckers certainly would not be expected to prey on these 
insects, and for only one species, the downy woodpecker (Dryobates 
pubescens), is there any record, and that for only two birds out of 750. 
Stomachs of Allen’s humming bird, of the Pacific coast, show a 
record of 1 in 3 with 22 per cent jassid food; but this is offset by 88 
per cent of spiders, which would suggest that the jassids were secured 
when in the grasp of spiders; another western hummer, Calypte anna, 
shows 10 in 111. 
The nighthawk is distinctly msectivorous and as jassids are more 
or less on the wing at night these would seem open to attack, but the 
record shows only 22 birds out of 250 to have fed on them and the 
ratio of these to other insects to be very small. One or two excep- 
tional cases would indicate captures during some extensive flight of 
jassids. 
- 
