THE FOOD or NESTLING BIRDS. 293 



Mourning doves feed their young on seeds of 

 spurge, ragweed, sunflowers, pigeon grass, and com, all 

 reduced to what is called pigeons' milk. One nestling 

 examined by Mr. Judd had seventy-five hundred sorrel 

 seeds in its crop. 



Gallinaceous birds are not exclusively vegetarians 

 as adults, and their young, as far as they have been 

 investigated, are fed largely on insect diet at first. Prairie 

 chickens and quails feed their young on cutworms, army 

 worms, chinch bugs, twelve-spot cucumber beetles, and 

 Rocky Mountain locusts. Mongolian pheasants, now 

 being introduced into some parts of the country, greedily 

 eat potato beetles, are bred for that purpose in some parts 

 of the Middle West. Whether they can be induced to 

 breed freely and naturally in this country remains to be 

 seen. 



Cranes feed their nestlings on earthworms and 

 carabid beetles. One nestling two. months old ate 

 seventeen- year cicadas, a quart of them a day, as long as 

 the mother crane's "find" held out. 



Warblers eat, as adults, and feed their nestlings, the 

 smaller insects, such as leaf-eaters, both bugs and beetles, 

 and plant lice. 



Baltimore Oriole. — In an examination of one hundred 

 stomachs, thirty-four per cent of the food was cater- 

 pillars, the remainder mainly other insects, very little 

 being fruit, and that principally of the wild sorts, and no 

 trace of grapes. (John Burroughs accuses the bird of 

 being a grape-eater.) 



Chickadees. — Winter food of the adults consists of 

 insects' eggs, such as tent caterpillar and fall canker-worm 

 eggs, winter forms of plant and scale lice, and many com- 

 mon and injurious hibernating forest tree pests. Their 



