26 BULLETIN 107, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
Adult blackbirds consume the largest proportion of alfalfa weevils 
in June, when the insect comprises nearly a third (32.70 per cent) of 
the food. Among the 99 stomachs examined are to be found records 
of the most remarkable work done by this bird. Only four had 
failed to eat the insect. The 99 birds together had made away with 
580 adults, 68 pupae, and 4,406 larva?, averaging 6.4 adults, 0.7 pupa, 
and 48.9 larva?, or 56 individuals per bird. Though this bird has 
a strong liking for insects of larger size, as cutworms and beetles of 
various kinds, the weevil formed the greater portion of the contents 
of many stomachs. In 11 cases it amounted to 90 per cent or more 
of the food. 
A female secured from a post-breeding flock had devoured the 
largest number of weevils recorded for any individual bird — 374 
larva?, 65 pupa?, and 3 adult weevils, a total of 442 individuals, com- 
prising 96 per cent of the stomach contents. (See PI. IV.) It also 
had eaten the larva? of an aquatic beetle, a caterpillar, a dipterous 
larva, a nymph of a tree hopper (Membracida?), two spiders, and 
a little rubbish, including a seed of filaree. Three birds had eaten, 
respectively, 281 larva?, 268 larva? and 6 adults, and 240 larva? and 17 
adults. In each case the weevil comprised 90 per cent of the food. 
Another had eaten 212 larva? and 4 adults. In each of 14 other birds 
the combined number of larva?, pupa?, and adults amounted to over 
100, noteworthy among which was one containing 1 adult and 190 
larva?; another with 3 adults and 170 larva?: and a third with 14 
adults and over 140 larva?. 
Besides the weevils eaten during this month (32.7 per cent) the 
adult birds had taken nearly an equal quantity (27.83 per cent) 
of caterpillars. In seven stomachs this item made up over 90 per 
cent, while in one it formed the entire contents, the bird having eaten 
about 23 of these insects. Carabid beetles, Hemiptera, Orthoptera, 
and spiders formed the bulk of the remainder. The vegetable food, 
amounting to but little more than 5 per cent, was unimportant, as 
much was rubbish. 
In July the depredations of these birds on the weevil are con- 
fined almost wholly to feeding on the adults of the year, which 
by this time are out in great numbers, especially in the vicinity of 
haystacks and along ditch banks, where they early seek places of 
hibernation. In one favorite resort of these birds about the base of 
a recently constructed stack, so many adult insects had fallen from 
the hay while the stack was being built that a brush of the hand in 
the debris at the base would disclose a squirming mass of hundreds 
which produced a distinctly audible " whir " in their scramble 
through the dry hay for new places of shelter. 
During this month the weevil formed 20.26 per cent of the food, 
taken on an average of 12.45 adults and 1.79 larva? per bird, and it was 
