68 FOOD OF BOBOLINK, BLACKBIRDS, AND GRACKLES. 
Besides the insects already mentioned, small quantities of ants, 
flies, bugs, May-flies, myriapods, and spiders were given to the young. 
These last merit a special notice from the fact that they form the 
earliest food of the bird. A number of tiny stomachs were examined, 
evidently taken from birds less than 24 hours old. In nearly every 
case they contained either a single spider or several very small ones— 
undoubtedly the bird’s first meal. The very young stomachs are thin, 
almost membranous sacs, entirely unlike the stout, muscular gizzards 
of the adult birds, which explains why soft, easily crushed food is 
required for the newly hatched young. It is only after they have 
attained considerable growth and the stomach walls have become 
somewhat muscular that they are able to digest such food as hard 
beetles and corn. 
The vegetable food of the young consists of corn and fruit, with 
mere traces of half a dozen other things. Corn amounts to 15 percent 
of the total food, but is fed only to the older birds, whose stomachs 
have acquired the requisite muscular strength to digestit. Fruit con- 
stitutes about 7 percent of the food, almost exactly the same quantity 
as is consumed by the adults in the month of June, and consists of the 
same varieties. 
SUMMARY. 
From the foregoing results it appears that the food of the crow 
blackbird for the whole year consists of animal and vegetable matter in 
quite unequal proportions. Of the animal component, nine-tenths are 
insects, and of the insects two-thirds are noxious species. The charge 
that the blackbird is a habitual robber of other birds’ nests seems to 
be disproved by the stomach examinations. 
Of the vegetable food it has been found that corn constitutes more 
than half and other grain less than one-seventh. Oats are seldom 
eaten except in April and August, and wheat is taken chiefly in July 
and August. Fruit is eaten in such moderate quantities that it has no 
economic importance, particularly in view of the fact that so little 
belongs to cultivated varieties.! 
The farmer whose grain is damaged, if not wholly ruined, by these 
birds, may attempt to count his loss in dollars and cents, but the good 
services rendered by the same birds earlier in the season can not be 
estimated with sufficient precision for entry on the credit side of the 
ledger. And although the number of useful predaceous beetles they 
destroy is rather large, yet it must be considered that the final value 
of useful birds depends not so much on the character of the insects they 
destroy as on the extent of their work in keeping the great tide of 
‘In the appended table blackberrics, raspberries, and other fruits of the genus 
Jiubus are classed as cultivated fruit, since it is impossible to distinguish the wild 
from the cultivated in stomach examinations; but probably by far the greater part 
comes from wild plants. 
