GAME, AQUATIC, AND RAPACIOUS BIRDS. 



19 



The other items of food are assigned 100 per cent, and the percentages 

 are given on that basis. Various beetles, chiefly aquatic, compose 

 23.3 per cent of the food; other insects (including aquatic bugs, 

 caddis and chironomid larvae, dragon-fly nymphs, etc.), nearly 12 

 per cent; fishes, 27.8 per cent; crawfish, 20.7 per cent; and other 

 Crustacea, 13.8 per cent. A little other animal matter is taken, 

 including snails and spiders, and a small quantity of vegetable food 

 was found in two stomachs. 



It has been claimed that grebes live exclusively on fishes and do 

 mischief in fish hatcheries. The results obtained by stomach exam- 

 inations show that they do not depend wholly or even chiefly upon 



FIG. 7. Horned grebe. 



fish. On the contrary, they eat a large number of crawfishes, which 

 often severely damage crops, and consume numbers of aquatic insects 

 which devour small fishes and the food of such fishes. w. L. M. 



FRANKLIN'S GULL. 



(Larus franklini. ) 



The term "gull" usually suggests a vision of dashing spray or far- 

 extending beaches with reedy bays and outreaching points of sand 

 or islets on which the birds rest to preen their feathers after their 

 long flights, and where perchance they make their nests and rear 

 their young. The species under consideration (fig. 8), however, 

 spends little time on the seacoast but is an inhabitant of far- 

 inland prairies and broad reaches of marsh land, where it lives and 

 breeds during the warm season. In winter it retires southward, but 

 lingers long enough in some of the Southern States to be of material 



497 



