Some Common Birds Useful to the Farmer (1926 edition)Beal, F. E. L. (Foster Ellenborough Lascelles)
Science
Some Common Birds Useful to the Farmer (1926 edition)
Beal, F. E. L. (Foster Ellenborough Lascelles)
Birds -- United States
In the 1,514 stomachs examined, animal food (practically all insects)
constituted 74 per cent of the contents and vegetable matter 26 per cent.
As would naturally be supposed, the insects were ground species, as
beetles, bugs, grasshoppers, and caterpillars, with a few flies, wasps,
and spiders. A number of the stomachs were collected when the ground
was covered with snow, but even these contained a large percentage of
insects, showing the bird's skill in finding proper food under adverse
circumstances.
Of the various insects eaten, crickets and grasshoppers are the most
important, constituting 26 per cent of the food of the year and 72 per
cent of the food in August. It is scarcely necessary to mention the
beneficial effect of a number of these birds on a field of grass in the
height of the grasshopper season. Of the 1,514 stomachs collected at
all seasons of the year, 778, or more than half, contained remains of
grasshoppers, and one was filled with fragments of 37 of these insects.
This seems to show conclusively that grasshoppers are preferred, and
are eaten whenever they can be found. Especially notable is the great
number taken in August, the month when grasshoppers reach their maximum
abundance; stomach examination shows that large numbers of birds resort
at this time to this diet, no matter what may be the food during the rest
of the year.
Next to grasshoppers, beetles make up the most important item of the
meadowlark's food, amounting to 25 per cent, about one-half of which are
predacious ground beetles. The others are all harmful species.
Forty-two individuals of different kinds of May beetles were found in
the stomachs of meadowlarks, and there were probably many more which
were past recognition. To this form and several closely allied ones
belong the numerous white grubs, which are among the worst enemies to
many cultivated crops, notably grasses and grains, and to a less extent
strawberries and garden vegetables. In the larval stage they eat the
roots of these plants, and being large, one individual may destroy
several plants. In the adult stage they feed upon the foliage of trees
and other plants, and in this way add to the damage which they began in
the earlier form. As these enemies of husbandry are not easily destroyed
by man, it is obviously wise to encourage their natural foes.
Among the weevils found in the stomachs the most important economically
are the cotton-boll weevil and the recently introduced alfalfa weevil
of Utah. Several hundred meadowlarks were taken in the cotton-growing
region, and the boll weevil was found in 25 stomachs of the eastern
meadowlark and in 16 of the western species. Of the former, one stomach
contained 27 individuals. Of 25 stomachs of western meadowlarks taken in
alfalfa fields of Utah, 15 contained the alfalfa weevil. In one stomach
23 adults were found, in another 32 adults and 70 larvæ, still another
had 10 adults and 40 larvæ, and a fourth had 4 adults and 100 larvæ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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