BREWER’S BLACKBIRD. ob 
In July the percentage falls to 8.2, apparently because at that time 
the grain harvest is at hand and the birds eat freely of oats, wheat, 
etc. The miscellaneous list is made up of a few flies, bugs, and cater- 
pillars, the latter such as might be expected in the stomach of a bird 
of the habits of the species under consideration, though the number 
really found is surprisingly small. One stomach taken in California 
in March contained 90 per cent of caterpillars, and a few other stomachs 
contained them in smaller amounts; but they do not constitute an 
important percentage of any month. Mr. J. F. Illingsworth, of 
Ontario, Cal., says that he has never failed to find from one to five 
worms [caterpillers] in each stomach that he has examined, which 
indicates that under some circumstances they do eat these insects 
extensively. 
The vegetable food of Brewer’s blackbird is preeminently grain, 
which amounts to 60.3 percent of the total food of the year, while 
all other vegetable food aggregates only 7.9 percent. Oats, corn, 
wheat, and a little barley are eaten, and of these oats are the most 
important, amounting to nearly three-fourths of the total quantity 
and being eaten in every month of the year.t. Corn stands next to 
oats, but far below in quantity; wheat follows next in order, and bar- 
lev comes last, the latter having been found in only two stomachs. 
So important an element is grain that it constitutes more than 50 
percent of the food in each of eight months, and in May, the month 
of least consumption, still amounts to 21 percent of the whole food. 
While much of this may be waste grain, it can hardly be probable that 
all of it is picked up in highways and byways. In July it amounts to 
nearly 72 percent of the food, and there can be no doubt that much 
of this is gathered from ripening fields. Other vegetable food con- 
sists for the most part of weed seed, but the small amount differs 
remarkably from the quantities eaten by the redwing and cowbird, 
which are great weed destroyers at all times, and especially in winter. 
Brewer’s blackbird eats grain in every month, and in winter subsists 
upon it almost entirely. Mr. Walter K. Fisher, writing from Stock- 
ton, Cal., reports it as feeding on newly sown wheat that had not been 
harrowed in and eating nearly all that had been thus left exposed. 
He describes the birds as visiting the fields in immense flocks, which, 
at a distance, look like smoke rising from the ground, and says that 
stomachs of birds taken on such fields were found to be full of wheat. 
SUMMARY. 
In summing up the results of this investigation it must be acknowl- 
edged that the stomachs examined are too few, and are not distributed 
widely enough geographically, to justify a fir economic classification 
of the bird. Nevertheless some very salient points seem to have been 
1The greatest quantities were found in stomachs taken in January at Escondido, Cal. 
