30 GRASSHOPPERS IN GENERAL. 



smaller forms. I came, however, upon a plover on the high plains 

 in Greeley county, busily dissecting a large western cricket, Anahrus 

 sp. The major part of the food found in stomachs of quails and 

 prairie-chickens examined was composed of insects belonging to this 

 family. It is safe to say that many birds not generally accredited aid 

 in reducing the number of locusts. Professor Snow first ascertained 

 that the red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus] , 

 yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus) , cat-bird (Galeo- 

 scoptes carolinensis), red-eyed vireo ( Vireo olivaceus), great- 

 crested flycatcher (Myiarchus crinitus), and crow blackbird (Quis- 

 calus versicolor) feed upon the locust. Prof. Samuel Aughey ha& 

 found by not less than 630 cases of dissection that ninety species of 

 birds are partial to locusts as food. Many winter birds seek the egg- 

 pods for food. 



Mr. F. E. L. Beal* states that grasshoppers are favorite food with 

 the yellow-billed cuckoo. Several stomachs examined contained from 

 ten to twenty of these insects, a good meal for so small a bird. Katy- 

 dids and their eggs were found in the stomachs of these birds. The 

 snowy tree-cricket is also used as food. Collectively, this group, 

 Orthoptera. were found in 86 of the 155 stomachs examined, and fur- 

 nish thirty per cent, of the year's food. Three per cent, of the food 

 in May is composed of these insects, and over forty-three per cent, in 

 July. 



Mr. S. D. Judd f states that the greater part of the insect food of 

 the loggerhead shrike is composed of grasshoppers and crickets, 

 and in summer grasshoppers are given preference as food. The bird 

 at this season impales upon barbed-wire fences and hedges more in- 

 sects than it utilizes, so that an examination of the stomachs would 

 not give a correct estimate of the insects destroyed. 



I saw a notice in some paper concerning an observation upon 

 snakes, made by Maj. Frank Holsinger, member of the editorial staff 

 of the Western Fruit Grower. I wrote Mr. Holsinger for details. 

 His letter, a part of which follows, is of great interest : 



/'Some years ago, while haying, I had a rake in my hands, when an 

 immense blacksnake ran from the windrow. I placed my rake on it 

 to hold it, but not wishing to kill it. It immediately disgorged an 

 immense amount of grasshoppers, of a kind common in Kansas, a large 

 yellow-legged variety that sometimes becomes destructive to our 

 meadows. I think the discharge was fully one-half pint, and I could 

 discover in it nothing but grasshoppers. I look upon them as our 

 friends rattlers and copperheads excepted. I believe they should 



* Bulletin No. 9, U. S. Dept. Agr. Biological Survey, June 15, 1898, p. 12. 

 t Ibid, p. 22. 



