The interest in the vegetable food of this bird centers around grain. Only three kinds, corn, wheat, and oats, were found in the stomachs in appreciable quantities. They aggregate but little more than 13 per cent of the whole food, oats forming nearly half of this amount. In view of the many complaints that the red-wing eats grain, this record is surprisingly small. The purple grackle has been found to eat more than three times as much. In the case of the crow, corn forms one-third of the food, so that the red-winged blackbird, whose diet is made up of only a trifle more than one-eighth of grain, is really one of the least destructive species. The most important item of the bird’s food, however, is weed seed, which forms practically all of its food in winter and about 57 per cent of the fare of the whole year. The principal weed seeds eaten are those of ragweed, barnyard grass, and smartweed. That these seeds are preferred is shown by the fact that the birds begin to eat them in August, when grain is still readily obtainable, and continue feeding on them even after insects become plentiful in April. The red-wing eats very little fruit and does practically no harm to garden or orchard. Nearly seven-eighths of its food is made up of weed seed or of insects injurious to agriculture, indicating unmistakably that the bird should be protected, except, perhaps, in a few places where it is overabundant. BOBOLINK. [Illustration: Fig. 15.—Bobolink, rice bird, or reed bird. Length, about 7 inches.]