6l2 
A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS 
seeds. This might seem to indicate that the birds feed to 
some extent upon grain, but the stomachs examined show only 
one kind — oats — and but little of that. The great bulk of 
the food is made up of grass and weed seed, which form almost 
the entire diet during winter, and the amount consumed is 
immense. 
Anyone acquainted with the agricultural region of the 
Upper Mississippi Valley can not have failed to notice the 
enormous growth of weeds in every waste spot where the 
original sward has been disturbed. By the roadside, on the 
borders of cultivated fields, or in abandoned fields, wherever 
they can obtain a foothold, masses of rank weeds spring up, 
and often form impenetrable thickets which afford food and 
shelter for immense numbers of birds, and enable them to 
withstand great cold and the most terrible blizzards. A person 
visiting one of these weed patches on a sunny morning in 
January, when the thermometer is 20° or more below zero, 
will be struck with the life and animation of the busy little 
inhabitants. Instead of sitting forlorn and half frozen, they 
may be seen flitting from branch to branch, twittering and 
fluttering, and showing every evidence of enjoyment and per- 
fect comfort. If one of them be killed and examined, it will 
be found in excellent condition — in fact, a veritable ball of 
fat. 
The Snowbird ( Junco hy emails) and Tree Sparrow (Spi- 
zella monticola ) are perhaps the most numerous of all the 
Sparrows. The latter fairly swarm all over the northern 
states in winter, arriving from the north early in October and 
leaving in April. Examination of many stomachs shows that 
in winter the Tree Sparrow feeds entirely upon seeds of weeds; 
and probably each bird consumes about one-fourth of an ounce 
a day. In an article contributed to the New York Tribune in 
1881 the writer estimated the amount of weed seed annually 
destroyed by these birds in the state of Iowa. Upon the basis 
of one-fourth of an ounce of seed eaten daily by each bird, and 
supposing that the birds averaged ten to each square mile, 
and that they remain in their winter range two hundred days, 
we shall have a total of 1,750,000 pounds, or 875 tons, of weed 
seed consumed by this one species in a single season. Large 
as these figures may seem, they certainly fall far short of the 
reality. The estimate of ten birds to a square mile is much 
