BLACK-HEADED GROSBEAK VS. EEUIT. 61 



Vegetable Food. 



Wheat and oats constitute but 2.08 and 1.83 percent, respectively, 

 of the total food. Weed seeds and miscellaneous vegetable matter 

 make up 9.28 percent, while fruit exceeds the sum of all these ele- 

 ments, and amounts to 20.96 percent of the entire subsistence, or 

 almost two-thirds of the vegetable portion of the food. Fruit as an 

 item of the bird's food assumes all the more importance because much 

 ■ of it is cultivated. 



Cultivated fruit that can be positively identified averages 9.85 per- 

 cent of the contents of the 226 stomachs examined, and wild species 

 6.37 percent. In addition, 2.02 percent consisted of blackberries and 

 raspberries, which may have been either wild or cultivated; 2.72 

 percent was undetermined fruit pulp of equally doubtful economic 

 significance. It seems certain, therefore, that considerably more than 

 half, perhaps two-thirds, of the fruit consumed by black-headed gros- 

 beaks is from orchards and gardens. As this may be taken from a 

 restricted region in a limited time, the item is of considerable impor- 

 tance in any locality where grosbeaks are numerous. 



Moreover, no fruit, however large and tough-skinned, is proof 

 against the massive beak of the blackhead, and the bird is likely to 

 damage a great deal more than it eats because of its habit of leaving 

 fruits after it has taken a single bite. Indeed, many of the fruits 

 it attacks are so large that the bird could not swallow them entire. 

 Apples, crabapples, peaches, apricots, pears, figs, plums, cherries, 

 gooseberries, and blackberries are included in complaints of injury 

 which have been received by the Survey and prunes and strawberries 

 must be added to the number on the evidence of stomach examina- 

 tions. 



According to Professor Beal," in California the depredations by the 

 black-headed grosbeak cause it to be ranked about fourth in impor- 

 tance among fruit-eating birds. What this means will be better 

 understood from account of the actual damage by the species. Prof. 

 A. J. Cook gives the following instance : * 



A cherry grower at Ontario, Cal., reports the loss of half of a $4,000 crop 

 of cherries from the depredations of birds in 1898. The birds in order of im- 

 portance are Piranga luAovioiana, Phainopepla tiitcns, and the present species. 



E. W. Nelson, of the Biological Survey, writes concerning his ac- 

 quaintance with this grosbeak at Nevada City, Cal. : " 



I ■yas told they were a great pest to ^ruit growers as they ate and destroyed a 

 great many berries. This I proved by shooting several with their bills stained 



"Yearbook Department of Agriculture 1904, p, 246. 

 * California Cultivator, Aug., 1898, p. 253. 

 Proc. Bost. See. Nat. Hist., 17, 1875, p. 359, 



