BIRDS HUNTED FOR FOOD OR SPORT. 347 



for at least four years, greater numbers have been seen or 

 killed than for some previous years. Nevertheless, the Golden 

 Plover is still in danger of extinction. Only four of my Mas- 

 sachusetts correspondents (1908) report an increase of this 

 species in the State, while fifty-four report a marked decrease. 



The food of the Golden Plover consists largely of insects, 

 Orthoptera being well represented. They are fond of grass- 

 hoppers and locusts, but Mackay says that on Nantucket he 

 has never seen them eat any, and that the stomachs that he 

 has examined have been filled with crickets, (which seem their 

 principal food), grass seeds, and a little vegetable matter like 

 seaweed. In Labrador they feed on the crowberry {Empetrum 

 nigrum). Formerly their vast flocks, visiting the ploughed 

 lands of Ontario in the fall, gleaned great numbers of insects 

 from the fields. All over their migration range in the west 

 they did great service in ridding the fields and prairies of wire- 

 worms, cutworms and other destructive insects exposed by 

 the plough. On the prairies of Manitoba they followed the 

 prairie fires, picking up the half-burned insects and those that 

 had escaped the flames among the grass roots. ^ This being 

 the character of their food, they are found principally where 

 it is plentiful, on ploughed lands, marshes, old fields, prairies 

 and pastures, particularly where the grass is short, as they 

 seem rather to dislike tall grass. The marshes and the com- 

 mon pasture about Newburyport, the hill pastures and shores 

 of Ipswich, the sandy hills and fields of Cape Cod, and the 

 pastures of Tuckernuck, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard 

 were favorite feeding grounds of this bird. 



Every farmer knows, or should know, that the grasshoppers, 

 locusts, crickets, white grubs, cutworms and wire worms which 

 the Plover eat are reckoned among the most destructive of all 

 pests in the hayfield, grain field or garden, and it must be evi- 

 dent to all thoughtful people that the immense flocks of Golden 

 Plover which formerly swept north and south over the fertile 

 plains of this country would have done great service to agri- 

 culture had they been protected during their flights up and 

 down the continent. 



' Nash, Charles W.: Birds of Ontario, 1909, p. 24 (Bull. 173, Ontario Dept. of Agr.). 



