JUNCO. 81 



abated — it will be found, often in company with other winter sparrows, 

 on the sunny hillsides which bristle with ragweed, cracking the seeds 

 that are spread on the snow-covered ground. 



The food habits of the junco are such as commend it highly to the 

 farmer. An examination has been made of 299 stomachs, collected 

 during every month in the year except May. They were secured 

 chiefly along the Atlantic seaboard, but a fairly large number were 

 obtained in the central part of the country and California. 



The food for the year as a whole, as indicated by these stomachs, 

 consists of animal matter 22 percent and vegetable matter 78 per- 

 cent. The animal mattei* is distributed as follows: Orthoptera and 

 Lepidoptera, each 2 percent; Hymenoptera, 3 percent; Coleoptera, 

 6 percent; miscellaneous insects, largely Hemiptera, 7 percent; and 

 spiders, with a few snails and other invertebrates, 2 percent. 



It will be convenient to consider the summer and winter feeding 

 habits separately. The summer diet, as far as can be judged by the 

 contents of 65 stomachs collected from June to August, inclusive, 

 mainly in the mountainous regions of California and on Roan Moun- 

 tain, North Carolina, is 49 percent animal matter and 51 percent 

 vegetable matter. Insects of the useful class comprise 1 percent of 

 ground-beetles and 5 percent of parasitic Hymenoptera. Insects 

 belonging to the injurious category amount to 25 percent of the total 

 food and are distributed as follows : Leaf -beetles, 2 percent ; weevils 

 (Rhjmchophora), 8 percent; caterpillars, 4 percent; grasshoppers, 5 

 percent; and miscellaneous insects, largel}^ true bugs, leaf -hoppers 

 (Jassidai), click-beetles, and longicorn beetles (Cerambycidse), 6 

 percent. Xeutral insects, mainly small dung-beetles, ants, and other 

 insects of little or no economic importance, amount altogether to 16 

 percent of the food. 



The vegetable food consists of various seeds, 49 percent of the 

 total, and wild fruits, 2 percent of the total. The seed matter is 

 distributed as follows: Crass seed, 5 percent; polygonum seed, 8 per- 

 cent; violet seed, 9 percent, and miscellaneous seeds, mainly those of 

 sedge, sheep-sorrel, wood sorrel, purslane, and chickweed, 2 percent. 

 The remaining vegetable food is composed of wild fruit, and includes 

 blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and elderberries. 



The summer feeding habits of the junco, although of a character 

 highly creditable to the species, are not of much economic impor- 

 tance, since the habitat of this bird during the breeding season is 

 largely beyond agricultural areas. But when the bird migrates to 

 fertile districts and extends over the whole of the United States in 

 autumn to remain until spring, it becomes a most important and 

 useful bird. The animal food at this time, which is of the usual char- 

 acter, is too small to be important. The vegetable food, which con- 

 stitutes 91 percent of the diet, may be conveniently divided into 

 three nearly equal parts ; the first of which is largely timothy, broom 



