Food Habits of the Thrushes of the United StatesBeal, F. E. L. (Foster Ellenborough Lascelles)
Science
Food Habits of the Thrushes of the United States
Beal, F. E. L. (Foster Ellenborough Lascelles)
Birds; Thrushes -- Food
_Vegetable food._--The vegetable portion of the food of the species is
made up of fruit, with a few seeds and a little miscellaneous matter
more or less accidental. Fruit collectively amounts to 35.30 per cent,
of which 12.14 per cent was thought to be of cultivated varieties and
so recorded, while the remainder, 23.16 per cent, was quite certainly
of wild species. This percentage of cultivated fruit is more than
three times the record of the wood thrush, while the wild fruit eaten
is correspondingly less, as the sum total of the fruit consumed is
very nearly the same with both birds. From this percentage of domestic
fruit one might infer that the veery was, or might be, a serious
menace to fruit growing, but no such complaints have been heard, and
it is probable that the species is not numerous enough to damage
cultivated crops. A close inspection, however, of the fruit eating of
the veery removes all doubts. The cultivated fruit, so called, was in
every case either strawberries or _Rubus_ fruits, i. e., blackberries
or raspberries, and as both of these grow wild and in abundance
wherever the veery spends its summer, it is probable that all of the
fruit eaten was taken from wild plants, though 12.14 per cent has been
conventionally recorded as cultivated.
Besides fruit, the veery eats a few seeds of grasses and weeds and a
few of sumac, but none of the poisonous species were found in the
stomachs. These seeds (7.25 per cent of the food) were eaten so
irregularly as to suggest that they are merely a makeshift taken for
want of something better. Rubbish (0.18 per cent), consisting of
decayed wood, bits of leaves, plant stems, etc., completes the
vegetable food.
Following is a list of the items of vegetable food and the number of
stomachs in which found:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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