The Food of Birds. 105 



trace of spiders or myriapods was found, and only two per 

 cent, of grasshoppers. The fruits stand at seventy per 

 cent., fifty-two per cent, being grapes and the remainder 

 berries of the mountain-ash and moonseed (Menispermum). 



O c toh er a n d D e c e nih e v . 



The robin commences to withdraw to tlie south in Octo- 

 ber, and his operations in central Illinois have little in- 

 terest during this month. At Normal the species became 

 rare earlier than usual this year, and but three specimens 

 were secured. These were feeding largely on wild grapes 

 (fifty-three per cent.) and ants (thirty-five per cent.). Six 

 per cent, of the food was caterpillars and two per cent, 

 wireworms (Elaterida?). I have seen the bird eating ap- 

 ples in all the autumn months, ))ut have never found the 

 remains of this fruit in the stomach, and doubt if any es- 

 pecial harm is done in this way. 



A single bird shot at Cairo in December, piping loudly 

 from a tree-top for company, the only one of the entire 

 family seen during a week's winter shooting in southern 

 Illinois, had evidently been feeding on the berries of the 

 mistletoe. By the inhabitants of that region, troops of 

 robins whi'ch commonly winter there were said to have 

 gone south in November, a fact attributed by them to the 

 failure of the wild grapes in the woods that year. 



R ec ap itulat i o n . 



The food of the robin, as indicated by the stomachs of 

 one hundred and fourteen specimens, consists almost en- 

 tirely of insects from February to May inclusive, but from 

 that time forward these make but little over a third of its 

 food, the remainder (sixty-four per cent.) being composed 

 of fruits* tame and wild, in varying proportions, according 

 to the local situation and surroundings. Insects make al- 

 most precisely two-thirds of the food of the year, taken as 

 a whole. 



In early spring the bird depends chiefly for food upon the 

 larvaeof a single speciesof fly (^i(^?o alhlpennis^ Say), which 

 it picks from among the leaves and roots of grass and weeds 

 in gardens, and similar situations. In February this made 



