204 
or significant differences, variations in numbers in the contrasted situa- 
tions being generally erratic and in different directions at different times. 
A comparison of the columns of our table for the two years gives 
us, in fact,-an impression that the grain fields are resorted to by most 
birds for occasional and temporary reasons, such as the superabundance 
of easily accessible and especially desirable food in the shocked wheat, 
or a scarcity of the ordinary food of the species elsewhere. The marked 
preference of the mourning dove for harvested wheat over any other 
of the situations of our table, and the unusual abundance of meadow- 
larks in 1909 in fields of harvested oats are probably to be thus accounted 
for; but the apparent preference of the dickcissel for standing grain is 
not so easily understood. Its uniform averages of 42 to the square 
mile in this situation, of only 6 or 7 in fields of shocked grain, and 
virtually none in naked stubble fields mean, on the face of the figures, 
that it finds in the growing grain important advantages which largely 
disappear when the grain is cut; but in view of the habits of the species, 
it seems to us more likely that the difference is due to the mere advance- 
ment of the season. The nesting period of the dickcissel is practically 
over by the time the grain is all harvested, and by the first week in 
August most of the birds have assembled in secluded roosts for their 
postjuvenal and postnuptial molts, soon after which they leave for the 
South. In fact, less than 10 per cent. of our dickcissels were seen after 
July 31 in fields of grain, either cut or uncut, and their relative scarcity 
in shocked wheat or oats is very likely due to their gradual withdrawal 
from the open country. 
ACREAGE SURVEYED OF WHEAT AND OATS, UNCUT 
AND CUT, 
WHOLE STATE, MiIpSUMMERS OF 1907 AND 1909 
1907 1909 
Uncut Cut Uncut Cut 
Crops 
Acres Acres 
Wheat | 134.52 151.14 201.15 123.90 
Oats 531.41 601.07 | 454.28 669.13 
