138 
The Food of Birds. 
April to September. Two of these birds were taken in 
April, live in May, six in June, six in July, two in August 
and one in September. I shall not attempt to follow the 
food of the species through these months, or to give its 
seasonal variations; but will content myself with a gen- 
eral statement of the food of the year as indicated by the 
contents of the stomachs of these twenty-two birds. 
Seventy-one per cent, of their food consisted of insects 
and twenty per cent, of fruit, a small ratio of spiders 
and mollusks and an unusually large percentage of 
Myriapoda making up the remainder. The four higher 
orders of insects occur in about equal quantities, the pro- 
portion of ants and crane-flies being extraordinary. 
Blackberries, strawberries, cherries and gooseberries 
appear among the fruits. Myriapoda amount to twelve 
per cent. — nearly all Polydesmus and lulus. The two 
parts of Arachnida included a few harvest-men. Orthop- 
tera and Hemiptera are respectively six and one per 
cent.; and snout-beetles and wireworms thirteen per 
cent. A few June-beetles had been taken, and one of the 
birds from northern Illinois had stuffed itself with rose- 
beetles {Macro dactylus subspinosus). Geotrupes and 
Onthophagus were noticed among the other Scarabaeidae. 
The Carabidae amounted to six per cent, of the food, in- 
cluding Evarthrus, Pterostichus, Harpalus, Anisodac- 
tylus and Bradycellus. Coleoptera make eighteen per 
cent, of the food and Diptera twelve per cent,, chiefly 
crane-flies and the larvae of Bibio albipennis. Lepidop- 
tera were taken in about the same amount, one-third be- 
ing recognized as cutworms, while ants reached the un- 
usual average of fifteen per cent. Helix labyrinthica, 
Papilla fallax and a few other univalve mollusks made 
one per cent, of the food. Compared with other Turdidse 
we find the general insect average unusual, exceeding 
that of the robin. It agrees with, and even surpasses, the 
catbird in its preference for ants ; and with the robin 
in the ratios of Lepidoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, Carab- 
idae and Scarabaeidae. It differs from the robin in its 
taste for ants and in the smaller ratio of fruits; and 
far surpasses all the other thrushes in the number of 
