12 BULLETIN 171, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



fence or in a prune tree, but when he reached El Quito the sky was streaked 

 with robins flitting about and having a gala time of it. Men were scattered 

 about through the orchard with guns, and every few minutes the report of one 

 of these would set the robins to flying, but in an instant they would settle down 

 again and resume their feast. 



Ellwood Cooper, of Santa Barbara, a prominent producer of olives 

 on the Pacific coast, in a letter dated January 25, 1901, says: 



The robin is a terrible pest to olives. The birds do not always appear to 

 come to the coast. My first experience was some 15 years ago. The olives were 

 late in ripening. I was as late as March making oil. The robins appeared to 

 come in by the thousands. My last orchard that year was about one-half mile 

 in length. The pickers were at one end. I had a man with a gun at the other, 

 but they would attack the middle, and when the gunner would reach them they 

 would fly to the end he left. This year they have been particularly bad. My 

 boys reported that the birds, mostly robins, picked more olives than they could. 

 The foreman of the pickers told me that he had knocked from a tree one-quarter 

 of a sack and went to dinner ; when he returned not an olive was on the ground. 

 I know that on the ground in one orchard where the rain had caused to fall as 

 many olives as would fill a bushel basket, in a week not one would be seen. 

 The robins do not seem to be able to pick the olives so rapidly from the trees, 

 but peck at those that are commencing to dry, knock them to the ground, then 

 get them. The birds at this writing are in all my orchards by the thousands. 

 They do not appear every year. It has been my theory that the native berries 

 in the Sierra some years are not in sufficient quantities for food. 



In the last sentence Mr. Cooper has probably struck the root of 

 the trouble. There is a crop of olives every year and the number of 

 robins fluctuates little. Robins rarely attack olives because usually 

 their native food .abounds, but where this fails the hungry birds shift 

 about until they find a substitute. 



The most common complaints against the robin in the past have 

 been on the score of eating cherries. Where a few trees are planted 

 for family use it is not unusual for the birds to take all the fruit ; 

 especially is this the case in a village or the suburbs of a large town 

 where wild berry-bearing shrubs have been destroyed. On farms 

 distant from towns this seldom happens, though the birds are apt to 

 take toll from the tree first to ripen its fruit. This seems to satisfy 

 their taste for fruit, and after that they take only an occasional 

 lunch. Reports are not wanting that the robin damages not only 

 strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries, but also larger fruits, as 

 pears, peaches, prunes, and grapes ; but such cases are occasional and 

 local and due to circumstances that also are occasional and local. 

 In a region where fruit raising is new, pioneers in the business fre- 

 quently suffer severe losses from birds that seem to be attracted by 

 the novelty. 



Of wild fruits properly so called the robin's dietary contains about 

 65 species, while the cultivated varieties amount to only about 10. 

 The robin eats also seeds, but so few as plainly to show that they 

 are not a favorite food. Of grain it eats rice, corn, oats, and wheat, 



