WRENS. 63 



Vegetable food. — But little vegetable food was found in the stom- 

 ach of the marsh wren, and the precise value of most of that was not 

 determinable. A few seeds of sedge and one of amaranth were all 

 that were identified. The total amount was a trifle over 2 percent. 



Animal food. — Beetles, wasps, ants, bugs, caterpillars, and a few 

 miscellaneous insects, with some spiders and snails, make up the 

 bill of fare. As with the Bewick and the house wren, bugs are the 

 largest item, but do not quite equal the quantity eaten by those indus- 

 trious bug-hunters. While the BeAvick eats these insects to the extent 

 of 31 percent of its food, the marsh wren eats them only to the amount 

 of 29 percent. In this respect there seems to be little difference 

 between the bird that gets its food from trees and the one that feeds 

 among the tules and sedges. The families represented are those of 

 the assassin-bugs, damsel-bugs, leaf-bugs, stink-bugs, leaf-hoppers, 

 and tree-hoppers, most of which are usually found on trees — in fact, 

 one is forced to the conclusion that the marsh wren must at times 

 forage upon trees or shrubs. Scales were found in one stomach, 

 which is another point of resemblance between the diet of this bird 

 and that of the habitual tree inhabiters. 



In the marsh wren's food caterpillars and chrysalids rank next to 

 bugs in importance. They amount to about 17 percent of the whole, 

 and appear in the food of every month. Cocoons of tineid moths 

 were contained in a number of stomachs, another indication that the 

 birds visit trees. 



Beetles constitute 16 percent of the food. While a number of the 

 commoner families are represented, the terrestrial forms are rather 

 more prominent than in the food of the arboreal wrens. A few cara- 

 bids and a number of coccinellids together make up 2 percent of the 

 food, and were the only useful insects eaten, unless the assassin-bugs 

 are reckoned as such. As these feed on other insects they must of 

 course do some good. Ants and wasps amount to about 8 percent 

 of the food, and most of them were eaten during the fall months. 

 Flies, grasshoppers, dragon-flies, and a few insect remains not fur- 

 ther identified make up over 11 percent of the food. They were 

 eaten very irregularly. Spiders constitute somewhat more than 5 

 percent, and, a? usual, are very regularly eaten, but in small num- 

 bers. Small mollusks (snails) were eaten by quite a number of birds, 

 and 1 stomach contained 11 specimens. 



SUMMARY. 



This brief review of the food of the marsh wren, while not abso- 

 lutely conclusive, is sufficiently near the truth to prove that the bird 

 is to be ranked among our eminently useful species. Of some birds it 

 has been said that their peculiar merit lies in the fact that they 

 reside in orchards and cultivated ground and hence destroy insect 



