88 THE RELATION OF SPARROWS TO AGRICULTURE. 



the vast forest which stretches from Labrador to Alaska. Summering 

 in this region, as it does, it is of no economic importance imtil it 

 migrates south in autumn into the agricultural lands of Canada and 

 the United States. It then spreads over the whole country to the Gulf 

 of Mexico. 



The fox sparrow is the largest sparrow in the United States, 

 exclusive of Alaska. It is found often in the Avoods, where it is likely 

 to be mistaken for a hermit thrush on account of its large size, red- 

 dish color, and spotted breast. Its song is utterly unsparrowlike, a 

 unique performance that seems not in the least akin to bird music, 

 but more like the soft tinkling of tiny silver bells. In food habits it 

 is a true sparrow, showing some resemblance, however, to the cardinal 

 grosbeak (also a member of the finch family) in its fondness for ber- 

 ries, or, as is more likely, berry seeds. Both the fox sparrow and the 

 cardinal have powerful bills, and are thus able to feed on seeds which 

 weaker-billed species of seed-eating birds can not crack. 



The food, as indicated by the examination of 127 stomachs, collected 

 principall}^ in the Eastern States, and during every month excepting 

 June, July, and August, consists of animal matter, 14 percent, and 

 vegetable matter, 86 percent. The animal food is of little interest 

 excepting in the month of April, when the bird begins eating largely 

 of millepeds of the Julus group — 20 percent of the food for the month 

 consisting of these invertebrates — and at the same time develops such 

 a taste for ground-beetles as to raise this item of its month's diet to 

 10 percent. The quantity of these useful insects destroyed during 

 the summer, when the bird is in its home in the far north, is probably 

 much less. 



The vegetable food differs from that of most other sparrows, in that 

 it contains less grass seed (only 1 percent), less grain, and more fruit, 

 ragweed, and polygonum. Half of the food consists of ragweed and 

 polygonum and more than a quarter of fruit. In its dependence on 

 fruit the fox sparrow resembles the white- throated sparrow. It does 

 no direct damage to cultivated fruit, though it occasionally eats the 

 buds of peach trees and pear trees. ^ Bradford Torrey has observed it 

 feeding on the fruit of burning bush {Euonymus americana) .^ C. A. 

 Averill, Bridgeport, Conn., reports that he has found it eating the 

 berries of the red cedar {Juniperus virginicma), and James H. Gaut, 

 of the Biological Survey, says that he has seen it feeding on poke ber- 

 ries in November in Washington. 



But although 28 percent of the food contents of the stomachs exam- 

 ined consisted of the seeds of berries and of fruit skin, it is safe to say 

 that barel}^ a third of this percentage represents actual fruit destruc- 

 tion, and that the remaining two-thirds of the seeds were eaten after 

 the pulp of the fruit had been removed by other agents. In only 7 of 



1 Letter from F. H. Metcalf, Holyoke, Mass., 1890. 

 2 Birds in the Bush, p. 220, 1885. 



