362 BIRDS OF ALABAMA 



ticularly fond of cleared lands where there are numbers of 

 dead snags still standing.^ Indeed, they are dependent upon 

 hollow trees and stubs, bird boxes, or hollow fence posts, for 

 nesting sites, and where such are not available bluebirds are 

 not found. These retreats are utilized, also, for roosting 

 places in the winter season. The bluebird feeds chiefly on or 

 near the ground; from a low perch, such as a fence post or 

 old stub, the bird scans surrounding territory with care and 

 frequently drops to the ground to capture a grasshopper or 

 other insect which it has espied. During the late summer and 

 fall the birds gather into loose, straggling flocks, and from 

 that season on throughout the winter are frequently seen in 

 numbers on the telephone wires along roadsides. Their mel- 

 low, plaintive whistle is a familiar sound throughout the sea- 

 son, and in spring the rich, sweet, warbling song is heard 

 about the nesting grounds. Gentle and confiding in its nature, 

 with a voice of plaintive tenderness, this bird has endeared 

 itself to all who know it. 



Food habits. — The food of the bluebird, as shown by exami- 

 nation of 865 stomachs in the Biological Survey, consists of" 

 about 68 per cent animal matter (insects, with a few spiders^ 

 myriapods, etc.) and 32 per cent vegetable. The insects eaten 

 include Orthoptera (grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids) , 22; 

 per cent; beetles, 20 per cent; Lepidoptera (caterpillars, with 

 a few moths), 10 per cent; and smaller quantities of ants, 

 wasps, bees, flies, and bugs. The vegetable food is composecE 

 largely of fruit, chiefly wild species, including bayberries^. 

 cedar berries, hackberries, pokeberries, blackberries, blue- 

 berries, elderberries, and the fruit of the sumac, poison ivy,, 

 holly, inkberry, Virginia creeper, and dogwood. Professor- 

 Beal remarks in this connection : 



The fruit-eating period of the bluebird is not in summer when 

 the fruit is fresh on the tree, but from October to February, 

 inclusive, during which months three-fourths of its fruit eating 

 is done. From this it appears that fruit is really the winter 

 food of the bluebird, tiding it over until insects are again abun-- 

 dant, and taking the place of seeds eaten by bo many birds at. 

 this season.* 



•B«!«l, r. E. L., Bull. 171, U. S. Kept. Agr., p. 24, 1916. 



