LAPLAND LONGSPUR. 55 
might be expected from the time and places of collection, show a very 
small quantity of animal food, only 6 percent, composed entirely of 
insects, the remaining 04 percent of the food being grain and weed - 
The largest percentage of insect food for any one month is 24 percent 
taken in December, an unusual month in which to find the maximum 
insect consumption. This apparent anomaly is readily explained. 
however, by the fact that all the December stomachs were collected in 
Texas, where insects are active throughout the winter and where the 
birds thus have opportunities for insect diet that do not prevail in more 
northerly sections. The insects making up the December food con- 
of weevils, ground-beetles, leaf-beetles (of the genus Systena), 
and grasshoppers (of tlie genus Teftix). Xo insects were eaten dur- 
ing the other months, except in May. when one longspur had caught 
a spider and another had eaten several cocoons of a certain spec: 
tineid moth, which is also an occasional article of diet with the closely 
allied snowflake. 
As indicated by stomach examination, Lapland longspurs derive 
nearly three-fourths of their subsistence in winter from grain and 
grass seed. The remainder is divided among such plants as rag- 
weed, sorrel, amaranth, lamb's-quarters. purslane, sedge, and different 
gonums. The grain taken consists chiefly of oats, wheat, barley, 
and millet, and constitutes 27 percent of the total food, millet alone 
making up 10 percent; but most of the birds whose stomachs con- 
tained grain were collected in stubble-fields, where they were feeding 
on waste grain, and *><> doing no damage to crops. Probably newly 
sown fields suffer most from their visits. They eat millet with avidity 
whenever and wherever it can be obtained, and undoubtedly would 
seriously damage this crop if it were not that it is sown after they 
have left for the north in the spring and harvested before they return 
in the autumn. They may possibly make themselves obnoxious in 
certain sections, as do the tree sparrows and English sparrows, by 
plundering millet stacks left exposed during winter: but thus far there 
has been no, evidence of this, and it seems probable that little or no 
harm is done in this way. The quantity of waste millet they eat. 
however, lessens their effectiveness as weed destroyers. < >f the food 
of 40 birds that were collected from a Kansas farm in January, in or 
near millet stubble. t;:j percent consisted of millet. 
When, as frequently happens, neither millet nor other grain is 
available, the longspur resorts to the >eed- of other similar plants, 
destroying large quantities of the seeds of such noxious weeds as 
>n-grass, crab-grass, and other panicums. And in high latitudes, 
where all such plants are snow covered, they feed on amaranth, lamb's- 
quarters. polygonums, and ragweed. Like the snowflakes, they are 
to be credited with feeding in higher latitudes tin n are occupied by 
other sparrows dining the winter, and on more open plains than the 
others frequent. 
