SONG SPARROW. 83 
the barnyard for hayseed. It seeks its food on the ground, running 
in a peculiar mouse-like way through grass or weeds. 
Its food, as indicated by the examination of 401 stomachs from 20 
States and British Columbia, collected during every month in the year, 
ists of animal matter, insects with occasionally a spider or snail, 
o4 percent ; and vegetable matter, mostly seeds. 66 percent. That the 
bird haunts damp localities is well shown by certain articles of its 
food, such as wild rice, sedge, smartweed. tall smooth panicum (Pani- 
ru/ii virgatum), and spreading panicum (Panicum proliferum), sand- 
fleas, aquatic snails, tiger-beetles. May-flies, and dragon-flies. But it 
often leaves its favorite resort, along water courses, and seeks its food 
on the uplands with other species of sparrows, feeding on woodbine 
berries with white-throated sparrows, picking up seeds of crab-grass 
and ragweed in eon^any with juncos and tree sparrows, devouring 
earthworms on the lawn with the robin, and even fighting with Eng- 
lish sparrows for its share of bread crumbs upon the city street. 
When raspberries are ripe it will once in a while assist the catbird 
and brown thrasher in removing some of the choicest and most 
luscious. In Maryland it has a habit of hunting round wheat-straw 
ricks for grain that has not been entirely threshed out. Still, taken 
as a whole, the food habits of this popular cheery-voiced sparrow are 
nor very different from those of a number of other species. 
of the vegetable portion (66 percent) of the year's food, 3 percent 
consists of ragweed. 5 percent of grain, 10 percent of polygonum and 
related seeds, 24 percent of grass seed, and IS percent of miscella- 
neous seeds, such as those of wild sunflower, amaranth, lainb's-quar 
ters. clover, gromwell. rib-grass, wild solanum, purslane, spurge, 
wood sorrel, dandelion, chickweed, dock, and sheep-sorrel. The last 
two are seldom eaten by most other birds. More polygonum seed is 
taken by the song sparrow than by any other sparrow, largely because 
most polygonums grow in moist places where song sparrows are often 
very abundant. Several species of polygonums are weed pests on 
low ground, and much good is done by the systematic destruction of 
their seeds by the song sparrow during every month in the year. More 
than half the grass-seed food belongs to such troublesome species as 
crab-grass and pigeon-grass. The bird is so numerous that it must 
destroy large quantities of these weeds. The seeds of other grasses, 
such as timothy, paspalum, old-witch grass, barnyard grass, tall 
smooth panicum. spreading patiicum, "beard-grass (Andropogon), 
orchard grass, sheathed rush-grass, yard-grass, wild rye. wild rice, and 
others form about 8 percent of the food. 
The song sparrow, like the white-throated, white-crowned, and 
fox sparrows, manifests a taste for fruit, especially during July, when 
blackberries strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, mulberries, and 
wild black cherries are eaten to the extent of nearly 8 percent of the 
food. This diet is largely abandoned when the weed-seed harvest is 
