LAPLAND LONGSPUR. 55 



might be expected from the time and places of collection, show a very 

 small quantity of animal food, onl}^ percent, comj)osed entirel}^ of 

 insects, the remaining 94 percent of the food being grain and weed seed. 

 The largest iDcrcentage of insect food for any one month is 24 percent 

 taken in December, an unusual month in which to find the maximum 

 insect consumption. This apparent anomaly is readily explained, 

 however, by the fact that all the December stomachs were collected in 

 Texas, where insects are active throughout the winter and where the 

 birds thus have opportunities for insect diet that do not prevail in more 

 northerly sections. The insects making up the December food con- 

 sist of weevils, ground-beetles, leaf -beetles (of the genus Systena), 

 and grasshoppers (of the genus Tettix). No insects were eaten dur- 

 ing the other months, except in May, when one longspur had caught 

 a spider and another had eaten several cocoons of a certain species of 

 tineid moth, which is also an occasional article of diet with the closely 

 allied snowflake. 



As indicated by stomach examination, Lapland longspurs derive 



•early three-fourths of their subsistence in winter from grain and 

 grass seed. The remainder is divided among such plants as rag- 

 weed, sorrel, amaranth, lamb's-quarters, purslane, sedge, and different 

 polygonums. The grain taken consists chiefly of oats, wheat, barlej^ 

 and millet, and constitutes 27 percent of the total food, millet alone 

 making u^ 19 percent; but most of the birds whose stomachs con- 

 stained grain were collected in stubble-fields, where they were feeding 



>n waste grain, and so doing no damage to crops. Probabl}^ newly 

 'sown fields suffer most from their visits. Thej' eat millet witli avidity 

 ^whenever and wherever it can be obtained, and undoubtedl}^ would 



jriously damage this crop if it were not that it is sown after they 

 ^have left for the north in the spring and harvested before the}^ return 

 in the autumn. They may possibly make themselves obnoxious in 



jertain sections, as do the tree sparrows and English sparrows, by 



)lundering millet stacks left exposed during winter; but thus far there 

 has been no evidence of this, and it seems x^robable that little or no 

 'harm is done in this way. The quantity of w^aste millet they eat, 

 'however, lessens their effectiveness as weed destroyers. Of the food 

 of 40 birds that were collected from a Kansas farm in January, in or 

 near millet stubble, 63 jDcrcent consisted of millet. 



When, as frequently hapxDens, neither millet nor other grain is 

 available, the longspur resorts to the seeds of other similar plants, 

 destroying large quantities of the seeds of such noxious weeds as 

 pigeon-grass, crab -grass, and other panicums. And in liigh latitudes, 

 where all such plants are snow covered, tlie}^ feed on amaranth, lamb's- 

 quarters, poh^gonums, and ragweed. Like the snowflakes, they are 

 to be credited with feeding in higher latitudes th^!,n are occupied by 

 other sparrows during, the winter, and on more ojpen plains than the 

 others frequent. 



