THE EED-WINGED BLACKBIRD. 39 



of Columbia, and Canada (see p. 74). The greater number of these 

 stomachs were collected in the Northern States during- and immediately 

 before or after the breeding season. Most of those taken in the South 

 were collected in Texas during the winter. These throw considerable 

 light on the winter food, which does not apparently differ greatly from 

 that eaten in the Northern States in the early spring andjate fall. No 

 stomachs were received from the rice-growing region during sowing 

 and harvesting. 



The food of the year was found to consist of 73.4 percent of vege- 

 table matter and 26.6 percent of animal. The animal food begins 

 with 1.4 percent in January and gradually increases to 88.2 percent 

 in June, after which it regularly decreases to a fraction of 1 percent 

 in November. With the exception of a few snails and crustaceans, it 

 consists entirely of insects and their allies (spiders and myriapods), so 

 that, roughly speaking, insects constitute one-fourth of the year's food. 

 They consist principally of beetles, grasshoppers, and caterpillars, 

 with a few wasps, ants, flies, bugs, and dragon-flies. 



The beetles (Coleoptera) amount to a little more than 10 percent of 

 the food, and the greater part of them are harmful insects. They 

 belong to several families, but only one group is eaten extensively 

 enough to be greatly distinguished above the others. This is the sub- 

 order of snout-beetles or weevils (Rhynchophora). These constitute 

 4.1 percent of the year's food, but in June amount to 22.4 percent of- 

 the food of the month. All the beetles of this group are injurious, 

 some of them greatly so. Useful predaceous beetles (Carabidse) are 

 eaten to the extent of 2.5 percent of the food of the year, but are 

 taken mostly in spring and early summer. Other beetles, belonging 

 to several families, such as click-beetles (Elateridee), leaf -beetles (Chry- 

 somelidas). May-beetles (Scarabseidse), and a few others, amount 

 altogether to 3. 5 percent. 



Grasshoppers (Orthoptera) are eaten practically in every month of 

 the year, though none were found in the 11 stomachs taken in January. 

 They constitute 4.7 percent of the whole food, and are exceeded by 

 no other insects except beetles and caterpillars. The greatest number 

 (amounting to 17 percent) are eaten in August, the ' grasshopper 

 month.' As all species of grasshoppers are injurious, their destruc- 

 tion must be counted to the credit of the bird. 



Caterpillars (larvse of Lepidoptera) form 5.9 percent of the year's 

 food. They are eaten to a slight extent in the winter months and in 

 gradually increasing amounts up to May, when they form 20 percent 

 of the food. Their consumption falls away to almost nothing in Au- 

 gust, when grasshoppers are plentiful, and rises again in September, 

 showing that grasshoppers are preferred, and for a short time replace 

 the lepidopterous food. The same fact has been shown in the case of 



