ROSEBREAST VS. PEAS. 35 
The items obtained from cultivated crops, being of chief interest, 
will be considered first. While it is needless to state that most of 
the testimony regarding the value of this bird is favorable, yet com- 
plaints of injury from it have been made which are verified by stom- 
ach examinations. The crop most frequently attacked by rose- 
breasted grosbeaks is the common garden pea. 
PEAS. 
Ten accounts from correspondence and published writings go to 
show that this grosbeak sometimes feeds upon peas. Six of them 
refer to damage in Iowa, two in Illinois, one in Massachusetts, and 
one general. Three persons regard the bird as very destructive: 
three, while stating that injury is committed, are less severe in their 
strictures; while the remaining four, admitting the consumption of a 
few peas, consider the bird’s services in preying upon injurious in- 
sects ample compensation for the loss sustained. 
The attacks of this bird upon peas were observed as early as 1839, 
W. B. O. Peabody ¢ writing as follows: 
At the latter part of the summer, our gardens are frequented hy the young 
in great numbers, and bitter complaints are made, with or without reason, of 
their depredations on the peas. 
Among more recent charges of injury, that of H. J. Giddings, of 
Sabula, Iowa, may be cited, both because the amount of damage is 
extreme, and further because the observations are supported in part 
by stomach examination. Mr. Giddings says: 
During the last summer [1892] rosebreasted grosbeaks were unusually 
numerous here. * * * The last two weeks in June and the first week in 
July (after the young had left the nest) they became very destructive, eating 
all kinds of fruit and entirely destroying a small patch of green peas in my 
garden. (Novy. 18, 1892.) \ 
Six grosbeak stomachs were sent in from this and other gardens 
where the birds had access to peas, but examination disclosed peas 
in only two of them, constituting in one case 10 percent of the 
stomach contents and in the other 80 percent. Peas were found in 
one other stomach also, of the 176 examined, this having been col- 
lected in Minnesota in July. It held + peas, which were 80 percent 
of the contents. Were there no other evidence, the above is sufficient 
to show that the rosebreast has a taste for green peas which is some- 
times gratified at the expense of the gardener. 
Some observers believe, however, that the bird makes full repara- 
tion for damage done. E. M. Hancock, of Waukon, Iowa, states: 
The rosebreasted grosbeak has more than made amends for its pea stealing 
by its determined warfare upon the Colorado potato beetle, helping very ma- 
terially to keep down this pest. (April, 1886.) 
«Birds of Massachusetts, 1839, p. 329. 
