BIRDS OF FIELD AND GARDEN. 315 
It never faltered, broke, or wavered, but kept straight on into 
the gathering gloom of night. The whole array presented 
no such appearance as the unformed flocks ordinarily seen 
earlier in the season, but was a finer formation than I have 
ever seen elsewhere, among either land birds or water-fowl. 
It seemed to be a migration of all the Crow Blackbirds in 
the region, and there appeared to be a few Rusty Blackbirds 
with them. After that date I saw but one Crow Blackbird. 
It was impossible to estimate the number of birds in this 
flight. My companions believed there were “millions.” 
The character of the food of the Crow Blackbirds is very 
wellknown. The large flocks in which they gather in autumn 
are very destructive to ripening corn, and some individuals 
destroy birds’ eggs or young birds; otherwise, in Massachu-. 
setts the birds are largely beneficial. They sometimes pull 
up a little sprouting corn, but are not nearly so destructive 
in this respect as the Crows. Dr. Warren tells of the dis- 
section of thirty-one birds that were shot in a Pennsylvania 
cornfield: nineteen showed only cutworms in their stomachs ; 
seven had taken some corn, but a very large excess of in- 
sects, mainly beetles and cutworms, with earthworms; the 
remaining five had eaten chiefly beetles. The Crow Black- 
bird industriously follows the plow, and picks up many 
beetles, grubs, cutworms, and some earthworms. In spring 
and summer its food in Massachusetts is mainly insects. 
Nearly twenty-five hundred stomachs of the species have 
been examined in Washington. The food for the year was 
composed of over thirty per cent. animal and almost seventy 
per cent. vegetable matter, which shows that the birds are al- 
most as omnivorous as the Crow. Insect food forms twenty- 
seven per cent. of the whole. The greater part is taken in 
summer. Beetles, particularly Scarabeids like the “June 
bug” or “rose bug,” Carabids or ground beetles, curculios 
or weevils, form a large part of the food. The Grackles 
seem to be fond of white grubs, and the stomach is often 
packed with these insects. Grackles are not so skillful in 
digging them out as is the Robin, but they are sly enough 
to snatch the grub away from the Robin when he has secured 
one. They are very destructive to grasshoppers and locusts, 
