. Birds in their relations to man; a manual of economic ornithology for the United States and Canada . nt. It isa regular migrant, breeding in the north and wintering south. We are indebted to Professor Forbes for quite a full knowl-edge of the food of the brown thrush. Two separate inves-tigations Avere made, the first including twenty-eight birdsshot in Illinois during April, May, June, and July, and thesecond sixty-four specimens covering the six months fromApril to September. The feeding habits for this time are thusrecapitulated. The brown thrush, arriving in April, finds nearly one- THE
. Birds in their relations to man; a manual of economic ornithology for the United States and Canada . nt. It isa regular migrant, breeding in the north and wintering south. We are indebted to Professor Forbes for quite a full knowl-edge of the food of the brown thrush. Two separate inves-tigations Avere made, the first including twenty-eight birdsshot in Illinois during April, May, June, and July, and thesecond sixty-four specimens covering the six months fromApril to September. The feeding habits for this time are thusrecapitulated. The brown thrush, arriving in April, finds nearly one- THE THRUSHES AND THEIR ALLIES. 101 half of its food in fragments of corn and other grains and seedspicked from the droppings of animals. This curious habit itmaintains throughout the year, evidently taking this foodfrom preference as well as from necessity. In fact, I haveoften found these vegetable fragments associated with black-berries in the food. After April this element averages aboutsixteen per cent, throughout the season. Insects amount toabout half the food for each month, except in May, when. THE BROWN THRUSH.{After Biological Survey.) they rise to three-fourths, and in July, when they drop toone-fourth. The excess in May occurs at the time of thegreatest number and activity of the beetles, and the diminu-tion in July coincides with the. period of the greatest abun-dance of the small fruits. One-half the insects eaten arebeetles, which stand at one-fourth of the food in April andJune, rise to one-half in May, and fall to about one-eighth inJuly and August. Half the beetles of the year are Scara-baeidee, chiefly June-beetles and Euryoma, all taken previousto July. Nearly one-fourth of the beetles are Carabidae,which remain at about five per cent, of the food, except inMay, when they rise to ten per cent. Although the ratios 102 BIRDS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO MAN. of spring-beetles and snout-beetles are but two per cent., thenumbers eaten are of some significance. My notes sho
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