MAGPIES, JAYS, CROWS: MAGPIE 
483 
Food. —Adults: Grasshoppers, a destructive black cricket, caterpillars, ground 
beetles, alfalfa weevils (one bird had eaten 181 adult weevils, and another, 24 adults 
and 180 larvae) codling moth larvae, rodents, carrion, and waste grain. Nestlings: 
Caterpillars, 22.1 per cent, many of them cutworms. Small mammals and carrion, 
14.75 per cent (the mammals including meadow mice, ground squirrels, gophers, and 
shrews), beetles 5.15 per cent, alfalfa weevils 2.42 per cent. One lialf-fledged young 
Map 36. American Magpie 
Shaded area shows 1926 breeding range. Triangles outside of shaded area mark 
mostly fall and winter records 
had been fed 74, and 5 had eaten, respectively, 62, 55, 33, 26, and 24. Eighty-five 
different items of food were recognized, including spiders, crustaceans, earthworms, 
reptiles, birds, mammals, and seeds of plants. 
General Habits. —The economic relations of the Magpies, in 
many localities, of necessity overshadow all their other relations, but 
the bird student from the East, where they are unknown, must be 
