128 The Food of Birds. 



a little earlier than the catbird, and, like that species, 

 leaves us in September. It is a shyer bird than eithei- of 

 the preceding, shrubbery and thickets being its favorite 

 haunts and nesting-places. 



April. 

 The record opens with fourteen specimens taken from 

 the 8th to the 28th of April. Five of them were from cen- 

 tral Illinois and nine from the northern part of the state, 

 in Lake and JoDaviess counties. Fifty-one per cent, of 

 the food of these birds consisted of insects, two per cent, 

 of spiders and six per cent, of thousand-legs. Seven 

 per cent, of the food was Hymenoptera, nearly all ants ; 

 five parts were caterpillars and five were grubs of Dip- 

 tera, — apparently crane-flies. Beetles make about one- 

 fourth of the food, and one-fifth of these were Carabidse. 

 Platynus, Agonoderus and Harpalus were the only genera 

 recognized. A remarkable feature of the food was the 

 occurrence of four per cent, of carrion-beetles, chiefly 

 Silpha lapponica and S. americana. Thirteen per cent, of 

 the food of the month consisted of Scarabasidae, about three- 

 fourths of these belonging to the genus Euryomia, which 

 eats the leaves of fruit trees later in the season. A few 

 June beetles were also taken at this time. A .trace of wire- 

 worms, three per cent, of snout-beetles (about two-thirds of 

 them Brevirostres), one per cent, of Hemiptera and two 

 per cent. Orthoptera were the remaining insect elements. 

 We come next to the distinctive feature of the food of this 

 bird among all the thrushes. Forty-one per cent, of the 

 food consisted of seeds and fragments of grain, of which 

 about one-seventh was acorns taken by woodland speci- 

 mens, and nearly all the remainder corn. The appearance 

 and odor of the contents of these stomachs left no doubt 

 that the fragments mentioned were picked from the excre- 

 ment of animals. 



Ma y . 

 The month of May is represented also by fourteen spec- 

 imens, taken at various dates from the 1st to the 27th, 

 chiefly early in the month. Eleven of these were shot in 

 the northern part of the state, between Galena and Wau-. 



