40 FOOD HABITS OP THE GKOSBEAKS, 



are of little economic value. Moreover, it is noticeable that the fruit- 

 producing or pistillate flowers are not the ones preferred, but the 

 sterile staminate ones. These are produced in countless millions, and 

 wither and fall away after a short season. All of the plants named 

 above, whose seeds are even occasionally utilized by man, such as 

 the hickories, walnuts, beech, and oaks, have the staminate and pis- 

 tillate flowers separate, while no use is made of the seeds of the maple 

 and elm, which have both sexes present in a single flower. 



Buds were found in but 2 stomachs, those in one being identified as 

 poplar, and remains of tender young shoots of some woody plant were 

 eaten by another grosbeak. These results indicate a much slighter 

 preference for buds than the bird is usually credited with. But even 

 admitting that the bird relishes buds, it is difficult to conceive how 

 forest and shade trees, numerous as they are, can possibly be injured, 

 since the rosebreast never gathers in large flocks during the budding 

 season. With fruit trees the case is different, for an isolated tree in a 

 home garden may receive the attentions of several birds at the same 

 time. But even then the chance of injury is slight, and in the major- 

 ity of cases the tree, as stated above, receives no more than a bene- 

 ficial i^runing. 



CULTIVATED FRUIT. 



The rosebreast is said to feed occasionally on cultivated fruits, but 

 no complaints of serious injury by the bird have been received. Most 

 observers state that they lose but little fruit by grosbeaks, and this 

 is considered only partial payment for services rendered. One cor- 

 respondent, after mentioning the fact that the birds eat the potato 

 beetle, says: 



They also feed ou.jny bervies. Still I plant enough for all, and put up with 

 the loss for the sake of their good qualities. 



The rosebreast is reported to attack cherries, currants, and other 

 berries. During the examination of stomachs, however, cultivated 

 fruit was found to have been eaten by only 1 grosbeak. This bird and 

 a companion were collected in a cherry tree in Massachusetts, where 

 they were suspected of pilfering the fruit. One had eaten perhaps a 

 single mouthful of cherry, which constituted 18 percent of its 

 stomach contents, and had eaten also some weevils, stink bugs, and 

 a potato beetle, all highly injurious insects. Several other grosbeaks 

 of the present collection were killed because they were thought to be 

 eating fruit, but their stomachs yielded no trace of it. 



WILD FBUIT. 



f 



While cultivated fruit is a negligible item of the rosebreasted 

 grosbeak's bill of fare, wild fruit, on the contrary, is the most im- 

 portant single article, constituting 19.3 percent, or almost a fifth of 



