SOME COMMON BIRDS USEFUL TO THE FARMER, 
13 
observed feeding on cherries, but when a neighboring fruit grower began to 
plow his orchard almost every blackbird in the vicinity was upon the newly 
opened ground close after the plowman’s heels in its eagerness to secure the 
insects turned up. 
The laboratory investigation of this bird’s food covered 312 stomachs, col¬ 
lected in every month and representing especially the fruit and grain sections 
of southern California. The animal portion of the food was 32 per cent and 
the vegetable 68 per cent. 
Caterpillars and their pupse amounted to 12 per cent of the whole food and 
were eaten every month. They include many of those pests known as cutworms. 
The cotton-boll worm, or corn-ear worm, was identified in at least 10 stomachs, 
and in 11 were found pupse of the codling moth. The animal food also included 
other insects, and spiders, sow bugs, snails, and eggshells. 
The vegetable food may be divided into fruit, grain, and weed seeds. Fruit 
was eaten in May, June, and July, not a trace appearing in any other month, 
and was composed of cherries, or what was thought to be such, strawberries, 
blackberries or raspberries, and fruit pulp or skins not further identified. 
However, the amount, a little more than 4 per cent for the year, was too small 
to make a bad showing, and if the bird does no greater harm than is involved 
in its fruit eating it is well worth protecting. Grain amounts to 54 per cent 
of the yearly food and forms a considerable percentage in each month; oats 
are the favorite and were the sole contents of 14 stomachs, and wheat of 2, but no 
stomach was completely filled with any other grain. Weed seeds, eaten in 
every month to the extent of 9 per cent of the food, were found in rather small 
quantities and irregularly, and appear to have been merely a makeshift. 
Stomachs of nestlings, varying in age from 24 hours to some that were nearly 
fledged, were found to contain 89 per cent animal to 11 per cent vegetable matter. 
The largest items in the former were 
caterpillars, grasshoppers, and spi¬ 
ders. In the latter the largest items 
were fruit, probably cherries; grain, 
mostly oats; and rubbish. 
BALTIMORE ORIOLE. 
Brilliancy of plumage, sweetness of 
song, and food habits to which no ex¬ 
ception can be taken are some of 
the striking characteristics of the 
Baltimore oriole 1 (fig. 12). In sum¬ 
mer it is found throughout the north¬ 
ern half of the United States east of 
the Great Plains. Its nest commands 
hardly less admiration than the 
beauty of its plumage or the excellence of its song. Hanging from the tip of 
the outermost bough of a stately elm, it is almost inaccessible to depredators 
and so strongly fastened as to bid defiance to the elements. 
Observation both in the field and laboratory shows that caterpillars consti¬ 
tute the largest item of the fare of the oriole. In 204 stomachs they formed 34 
per cent of the food, and they are eaten in varying quantities during all the 
months in which the bird remains in this country. The fewest are eaten in 
July, when a little fruit also is taken. The other insects consist of beetles, bugs, 
ants, wasps, grasshoppers, and some spiders. The beetles are principally click 
beetles, the larvae of which are among the most destructive insects known; and 
the bugs include plant and bark lice, both very harmful, but so small and 
obscure as to be passed over unnoticed by most birds. Ants are eaten mostly 
in spring, grasshoppers in July and August, and wasps and spiders with con¬ 
siderable regularity throughout the season. 
During the stay of the oriole in the United States, vegetable matter amounts 
to only a little more than 16 per cent of its food, so that the possibility of its 
doing much damage to crops is very limited. The bird is accused of eating 
peas to a considerable extent, but remains of such were found in only two 
cases. One writer says that it damages grapes, but none were found in the 
stomachs. 
Fig. 12. 
-Baltimore oriole. Length, about 
71 inches. 
1 Icterus galbula. 
