27 



shot on ground recently plowed, and he accounts for this by 

 the statement that the robin does not follow the plow as closely as 

 does the crow blackbird, and that the grubs soon bury themselves 

 in the soil, "hence the failure of the robin to find any." This 

 is entirely contrary to our experience here. We have found the 

 robin to be a much more effective destroyer of the white grub 

 than the cro\v blackbird, which will wait for the robin to find 

 and dig up grubs, and then quickly snatch them away from its 

 beak. If we were to rely on stomach examinations only, the 

 blackbird might get more credit for finding grubs in the ground 

 than he deserves. Our experience in Massachusetts is corrobo- 

 rated by that of Dr. Roberts of Minneapolis, who finds the 

 robins there much more expert in digging out grubs from lawns 

 than is the crow blackbird. 



Mr. Wilcox says that he has never seen the robin searching for 

 insect food except upon the ground. In Massachusetts, how- 



FIG. 6. Robin with White Grub for her Young. 



ever, the robin occasionally takes caterpillars from the trees. 

 It is quite probable that twenty observers scattered over the 

 county in which Mr. Wilcox made this investigation would have 

 made more or less contradictory reports. It is unsafe to gen- 

 eralize too much from observations made by one man in a single 



