4 BULLETIN 171. U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Owing to the complete protection the species enjoys, it sometimes 

 becomes overabundant for the best interests of horticulture, and its 

 depredations upon small fruits are so extensive as to try the patience 

 of its whilom protectors and friends, the fruit growers. In spite of 

 this the law still extends its protecting arm over the bird' in most 

 parts of the country, and fruit growers have to guard their crops as 

 best they can. Many who grow fruit for home consumption declare 

 that the robins take more than half the crop, and some have testified 

 that they often take the whole. 



Robert B. Roosevelt, writing from Sayville, Long Island, N. Y., 

 says : 



We have seven or eight cherry trees * * * in fair bearing of the finest 

 sort. We never get a cherry ! I mean this exactly. The robins eat or ruin the 

 whole just before they get ripe enough for the human taste. They also take 

 grapes and strawberries, but not on so wholesale a plan. 



W. G. Castellow, of Waterloo, Me., writes: 



When strawberries are cultivated in small patches of two or three rods in 

 extent, the robins will take them all unless the berries are picked when hard, or 

 the birds scared away by dogs, children, etc. 



These are fair examples of much testimony received by the De- 

 partment of Agriculture. There is no doubt that the bird often 

 commits extensive ravages among small fruits, but there is reason 

 to believe that the damage is limited to certain localities and is not 

 general. 



In the following details of stomach examination it will be noticed 

 that a large percentage of the robin's vegetable food consists of wild 

 fruit. This does not seem to have been true in the case of birds 

 examined by earlier investigators. If, however, as appears from the 

 present investigation, the robin prefers wild fruits to cultivated 

 varieties, we have at once a probable explanation of the fact that 

 some parts of the country enjoy almost complete exemption from 

 the ravages of which others complain. 



For a number of years the writer was engaged in the cultivation 

 of small fruits in Massachusetts, and although robins were abundant 

 about the farm the} 7 did no appreciable damage. On the farm 

 where the writer lived when a boy was a fine collection of the choicest 

 varieties of cherries. The fruit first to ripen each year was shared 

 about equally by the birds and the family, but that which matured 

 afterwards did not attract the birds, probably because in that sec- 

 tion the woods and swamps abound with many species of wild fruits. 



Reports of depredations upon fruit by birds come principally 

 from the prairie region of the West. This is just what might be 

 expected, for but few prairie shrubs produce the wild berries that 

 the birds prefer and for lack of these the birds naturallly feed upon 

 the cultivated varieties available. Reports of fruit losses caused 



