14 GROUSE AND WILD TUEKEYS 01? UNITED STATES. 



consin, Nebraska, and Texas; Illinois and Ontario furnished the 

 rest. The food consisted of 14.11 percent animal matter and 85.89 

 percent vegetable matter. The former was insects; the latter seeds, 

 fruit, grain, leaves, flowers, and bud twigs. 



Insect Food. 



The insect food included 12.78 percent of grasshoppers, 0.48 per- 

 cent of beetles, 0.39 percent of bugs, 0.12 percent of ants and other 

 Hymenoptera, 0.29 percent of other insects, and 0.05 percent of 

 spiders. The ruffed grouse takes about one-sixth less and the 

 bobwhite about one-third more of insects than the prairie hen. 

 Although the bobwhite destroys injurious grasshoppers, the relative 

 proportions of grasshoppers and beetles consumed by it and by the 

 prairie hen are notably different. In the food of the bobwhite the 

 grasshoppers are to the beetles as 3.71 to 6.92 ; with the prairie hen 

 the ratio stands as 12.78 to 0.48. Indeed, grasshoppers constitute 

 the bulk of the prairie hen's animal diet, the reason being probably 

 that on the prairies the grasshoppers vastly outnumber all other 

 sizable insects. For a gallinaceous bird the prairie hen is highly 

 insectivorous from May to October, inclusive, insects constituting 

 one-third of the fare of the specimens shot during this period. The 

 species is particularly valuable as an enemy of the Kocky Mountain 

 locust. During an invasion by this pest in Nebraska, 16 out of 20 

 grouse killed by Prof. Samuel Aughey from May to October, inclusive, 

 had eaten 866 locusts — a creditable performance, economically rated. 

 Some ornithologists believe that the diminution in the number of 

 prairie hens is in a measure responsible for the ravages of certain 

 insects. Farmers who know these facts must regret the extinction of 

 the bird in States where it once thrived, and they may well support 

 measures for reintroducing and protecting it. 



Almost every kind of grasshopper and locust appears to be accept- 

 able to the prairie hen. In the following list are named the species, of 

 short-horned grasshoppers identified in its food : 



Opomala sp. Schistocerca americana. 



Mermiria alacris. Cordillaoris occipitalis. 



Philibostroma quadrimaculatum. Stenohothrus curtipermis. 



Leptysma sp. Melanoplus femur-rubrum. 



Psolaessa sp. Melanoplus atlanis. 



Ageneotettix soudderi. Melanoplus bivittatus. 



Spharagemon sp. 



The prairie hen eats also long-horned grasshoppers (Xiphidium sp., 

 Conocephalus sp., and OrcheUmum sp.) and crickets {Gryllus sp.) 

 and tree crickets {CEcanth/us sp.). 



In its beetle diet the prairie hen makes iip in variety what it lacks 

 in quantity. Unlike our common small passerine birds, but like our 

 other gallinaceous birds, it feeds on the harmful leaf beetles. It 



