88 BIRDS OF CALIFORNIA AFFECTING FRUIT TNDUSTRY. 
attacking crops. Their habit of caring for and protecting plant-lice 
is too well known to require extended comment. They take possession 
also of the empty burrows of wood-boring larve and extend these 
galleries still farther into sound timber. They often throw up 
mounds on lawns and in gardens, where it is almost impossible to ex- 
terminate them. In houses they frequently are an intolerable nui- 
sance, infesting the pantry and spoiling food. The species that are 
not offensive in these various ways are mostly of a neutral character 
in their economic relations, and their destruction by birds does 
neither good nor harm. 
Hymenoptera, other than ants (mostly wasps), bugs, flies, and 
grasshoppers, with some spiders, amount altogether to 12 percent of 
the year’s food, and appear very regularly through the season. Grass- 
hoppers, however, are near being conspicuous by their absence, as re- 
mains were found in only 4+ of the 157 stomachs. This is rather re- 
markable for a bird whose habits are so terrestrial as those of the 
thrush. The majority of ground-feeding birds and many arboreal 
species feed largely upon grasshoppers. In fact, there is no order 
of insects for which insectivorous birds in general show such a decided 
preference. The spiders eaten by the thrush belong largely to the 
order Phalangida, commonly known as ‘harvest men’ or ‘ daddy- 
Jong-legs.’ 
Vegetable food—The vegetable food of the thrush consists prac- 
tically of fruit either wild or cultivated. A few weed seeds were 
found in several stomachs, but they amount to only a trace. It is 
probable that the greatest harm done by this bird is to the cherry 
crop, though undoubtedly it eats the later fruits to some extent. In 
May and June the fruit eaten reaches 41 and 38 percent, respectively; 
and this probably represents the greatest injury which the bird does, 
as most of the fruit was the pulp and skins of cherries. From June 
onward seeds of blackberries and raspberries (Rubus) were fre- 
quently found in stomachs, but as these berries are both wild and cul- 
tivated it is impossible to tell how much came from gardens. One 
stomach taken in early June contained seeds of the twin berry (Loni- 
cera involucrata). Seeds of the elderberry (Sambucus) were abun- 
dant in stomachs taken in the late summer and fall, and indicate that 
this fruit constitutes a very considerable portion of the vegetable diet 
of the thrush at that season. Besides these were seeds of the pepper 
tree, of Solanum (a weed), and one stomach contained fruit of the 
coffee berry (hamuus californica). A few seeds of poison oak were 
found in two or three stomachs. The greatest amount of fruit was 
eaten in September, and reaches a total of over 80. percent, but as the 
number of stomachs is not as great as could be desired the result can 
scarcely be considered final. Moreover, a large part of this was wild 
fruit. 
