WESTERN MOCKING BIRD. 53 



does considerable good by the destruction of harmful insects, it eats 

 much fruit, and from the Southern States, particularly Texas and 

 Florida, where fruit raising is an important industry, have come 

 bitter complaints against it. In Florida the bird is said to attack 

 grapes and oranges, and in Texas it is asserted that figs are to be 

 added to its food list. 



In California the mocking bird is a common resident only in the 

 southern half of the State and is very common only in restricted 

 portions. Xo serious complaints of the bird's depredations in this 

 State have yet been made, but this perhaps is due to the fact that 

 mocking birds are rare in sections where cherries and the smaller 

 deciduous fruits are grown. Where mockers are most abundant, 

 citrus fruits are the principal crop and the birds do not appear to 

 molest them. 



While a number of stomachs of this bird have been examined, they 

 are too few and too unequally distributed over the region under 

 investigation to justify final conclusions with regard to the animal 

 food; still they furnish information of value. It so happens that 

 33 stomachs were taken between July 18 and August 18, and another 

 a few days later. All but one of these stomachs were from the region 

 about Los Angeles, and this one was collected at Fresno. The av- 

 erage, therefore, is a little more than one stomach a day for this 

 period, and gives a fair idea of the food for the time and locality. 



The first analysis gives 23 percent of animal matter and 77 percent 

 of vegetable. There was no stomach which did not contain some 

 vegetable food, while 10 had no animal matter. 



Animal food. — Beetles of several families formed a little less than 

 1 percent. Hymenoptera, largely ants, were eaten to the extent of 

 somewhat more than 10 percent. Grasshoppers constituted the larg- 

 est item of animal food, and amounted to 11 percent of the whole. 

 A few caterpillars and spiders made up the other 1 percent of the 

 animal food. 



Vegetable food. — Of the 77 percent of vegetable food nearly 74 

 percent was diagnosed as fruit. Some of this, of course, was wild, 

 but blackberries or raspberries, grapes, and figs were found in many 

 stomachs. Many of the birds were taken in orchards and gardens, 

 and some were shot in the very act of pilfering blackberries. Others 

 were taken in a wild arroyo away from cultivation. The only species 

 of wild fruits that were identified were elderberries, which were 

 found in a few stomachs. The other vegetable matter was made up 

 of several elements. Of these, the seeds of poison oak (PL II, fig. 9) 

 are perhaps the most conspicuous, and one stomach was entirely filled 

 with them. A few weed seeds and some rubbish completed the vege- 

 table part of the food. 



