COMMON BIRDS OF SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES. 
27 
during the year. It is a rather noisy bird and keeps up its monotonous cry with 
tiresome iteration. In winter small flocks assemble, probably family groups, and 
ceaselessly wander about the forest in search of food, scrambling about the trunks and 
larger branches of trees for hidden insects and their eggs. At such times, they are 
very tame and pay little attention to human intruders. At the approach of spring 
they separate into pairs. 
For investigating the food of the tufted tit 186 stomachs were examined. These 
were too few and too irregularly distributed through the year to afford more than an 
approximation of the bird’s economic worth. The food consisted of 66.57 per cent 
animal matter to 33.43 per cent vegetable. Contrasted with the food of the brown 
thrasher, in which no one article predominates, that of the tufted tit includes one 
item, caterpillars, which forms more than half the animal food, and two items, cater¬ 
pillars and wasps, which are more than half the whole food. 
Beetles make up 7.06 per cent of the subsistence, and of these only one-tenth of 1 
per cent are useful species. More than two-thirds of the beetles (4.94 per cent) are 
snout beetles, or weevils. Among these the cotton boll weevil was found in four stom¬ 
achs. The remainder (2.02 per cent) are of various families, all harmful. 
Ants are eaten by this tit occasionally, but in the light of present evidence can not 
be considered a standard article of diet. Other hymenopterous food, i. e., bees, 
wasps, and sawfly larvae, is eaten much more extensively (12.5 per cent), and as the 
sawfly larvae predominate, the winged forms are not in the majority among the liymen- 
opterans. The tufted tit, like the cuckoo in this respect, takes many sawfly larvae 
when searching for caterpillars. 
Bugs, principally stinkbugs, tree-hoppers, and scales, or bark lice, are eaten to a 
moderate extent (4.03 per cent) in seven of the twelve months. Their absence from 
September to January, inclusive, would probably disappear with a greater collection cf 
stomachs. Scales were the most numerous of the bugs, and in two stomachs specimens 
of the European fruit scale were identified. In one stomach, and this taken in 
January, were found the remains of a single fly; from this record it may safely be 
asserted that flies are not a favorite food of this bird. 
Caterpillars apparently stand at the head of the dietary of the tufted tit, aggregating 
more than half the animal food for the year (38.31 per cent). They were eaten in 
every month but one—November. Of six stomachs taken in that month not one 
contained caterpillars, although both October and December stomachs show fair per¬ 
centages. The one stomach taken in August gives that month the highest of any, 76 
per cent. The titmouse is so small a bird that the caterpillars eaten are mostly torn 
in pieces before being swallowed, thus making identification difficult or impossible, 
but the cotton leaf worm was identified in one stomach. No grasshoppers or crickets 
were found. The only traces of orthopterous insects (0.42 per cent) were eggs of katy¬ 
dids, egg cases of cockroaches, and a jaw and an ovipositor thought to be of a grasshopper. 
Spiders are picked up in moderation and rather irregularly. They are evidently 
a makeshift food, and were found in 40 stomachs examined in May (12.67 per cent), 7 
stomachs in June (a mere trace), and 3 stomachs in July (16.33 per cent). Thousand- 
legs were not found. A few snails make up the remainder of the animal food. 
Of the vegetable food, corn was discovered in one stomach, evidently taken on trial. 
Fruit was eaten to a moderate extent (5.15 per cent), mostly in midsummer, and included 
raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries, which might have been of cultivated 
varieties, but probably were not. The wild fruits were such as grow by the wayside 
and in swamps, as elderberries, liackberries, blueberries, huckleberries, and mulberries. 
Seeds of various kinds, as sumac — including poison ivy — bayberry, or wax myrtle, 
aggregate 4.07 per cent. It is difficult to draw the line between broken seeds and mast 
instomachs of the tufted tit, but, together considered as mast, these form more than two- 
thirds of the vegetable food. While largely composed of acorns, there is no doubt that 
chinquapins and beechnuts and many smaller seeds enter into its composition. As 
