56 THE RELATION OF 9PARBOW8 To AGRICULTURE. 
VESPER SPARROW. 
i <•< /< 8 gramineua and Pooecetes g. confinis. i 
The vesper sparrow is a bird of t h<- upper Austral and Transition 
/.(dies. lis breeding range covers such portions of the United States 
and Canada as arc included in these /ones, though il rarely or cas- 
ually occurs in the Great Basin and California. In winter it is fonnd 
from the soul hern part of this range as far south as Vera Cruz, .Mexico. 
It is a bird of the dry, open upland, where its attractive song may 
be heard throughout the summer, particularly in the evening. It 
is found most frequently along roadsides or in grassy fields. When 
dist in-l>ed while feeding it flits 1 1 1 > from the ground, spreading its 
white-splashed tail, and alights l>nt a short distance away to resume 
its work. It is not as gregarious as the snowflake and Lapland Long- 
spur; for although several families may usually be seen in one com- 
pany during the summer, and loose flocks of 20 to *>(' may be noted 
during the southern migration, yet no such immense concourses are 
to be encountered as are frequently seen in the cases of those birds. 
One hundred and thirty stomachs of vesper sparrows, collected from 
a dozen States, but mostly from .Massachusetts, New York, [owa, and 
Kansas, have been examined. The food for the year, exclusive of 
March, as indicated by these stomach examinations, consists of 69 
percent of vegetable matter and -)\ percent of animal matter. 
The diet of a bird varies with the season. Thus, during the winter, 
practically the entire food of this sparrow is vegetable matter, while 
in summer its food is mainly animal matter. The animal food, at 
zero in winter when the snow covers the ground, rises with the tem- 
perature of theadvancing season, and attains its maximum of 90 per- 
cent with the full heat of slimmer. It then gradually falls as slim- 
mer declines and autumn progresses, until the return oi winter again 
marks its minimum. The animal matter consumed comprises one- 
third of the total food of the year, and is made up of insects. The 
Vegetable food consists of seeds. The insect portion of the diet is 
divided as follows: Beetles, L2 percent; grasshoppers and other 
Orthoptera, 11 percent; smooth, hairless caterpillars. 5 percent, and 
bugs (Heteroptera and Jassidae), ants, and other Hymenoptera, taken 
together, 2 percent. Beetles and grasshoppers form the bulk of the 
animal food, as they do with many other species of birds. As ^><>n 
as the beetles begin to crawl and take wing the bird is on the alert 
to capture them, and by May they have increased to one-third of the 
total food; but as grasshoppers become more and more abundant with 
the further progress of the season, these increase proportionately in the 
food until they become its chief constituent. The bird, however, is 
evidently very part ial to beetles, and does not a bam Ion them when the 
grasshopper diet is at its maximum, and even in winter an occasional 
hibernating beetle is plucked from its winter quarters and eaten. 
