[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Meadowlark. Length, about 10 inches.] Caterpillars form a very constant element of the food, and in May constitute over 24 per cent of the whole. May is the month when the dreaded cutworm begins Its deadly career, and then the lark does some of its best work. Most of these caterpillars are ground feeders, and are overlooked by birds which habitually frequent trees, but the meadowlark finds and devours them by thousands. The remainder of the insect food is made up of ants, wasps, and spiders, with some bugs, including chinch bugs, and a few scales. The vegetable food consists of grain and weed and other hard seeds. Grain in general amounts to 11 per cent and weed and other seeds to 7 per cent. Grain, principally corn, is eaten mostly in winter and early spring and consists, therefore, of waste kernels; only a trifle is consumed in summer and autumn, when it is most plentiful. No trace of sprouting grain was discovered. Glover seed was found in only six stomachs, and but little in each. Seeds of weeds, principally ragweed, barnyard grass, and smartweed, are eaten from November to April, inclusive, but during the rest of the year are replaced by insects. Briefly stated, more than half of the meadowlark's food consists of harmful insects; its vegetable food is composed either of noxious weeds or waste grain; and the remainder is made up of useful beetles or neutral insects and spiders. A strong point in the bird's favor is that, although naturally an insect eater, it is able to subsist on vegetable food, and consequently is not forced to migrate in cold weather farther than is necessary to find ground free from snow. THE RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS. The red-winged or swamp blackbird[41] in its various forms (fig. 14) is found all over the United States and the region immediately to the north. While common in most of its range, its distribution is more or less local, mainly on account of its partiality for marshes. It builds its nest over or near standing water, in tall grass, rushes, or bushes. Owing to this peculiarity the bird may be absent from large tracts of country which afford no swamps or marshes suitable for nesting. It usually breeds in large colonies, though single families, consisting of a male and several females, may sometimes be found in a small slough, where each female builds her nest and rears her own little brood. While her liege lord displays his brilliant colors and struts in the sunshine. In the upper Mississippi Valley the species finds most favorable conditions, for the countless prairie sloughs and the margins of the numerous shallow lakes afford nesting sites for thousands of red-wings; and here are bred the immense flocks which sometimes do so much damage to the grain fields of the West. After the breeding season the birds congregate preparatory to migration, and remain thus associated throughout the winter. [41] _Agelaius phœniceus_.