Book Description

Excerpt from Food Habits of Some Winter Bird Visitants The lar e beak and the contrasting plumage of yellow, black, and white maie the evening grosbeak an easily recognized species. Breeding in the western United States and Canada, during the winter it is occasionally seized with a wandering impulse which carries it east to New York, Pennsylvania, and adjacent States. Usually, however, it chooses to spend this season in the West, wandering over the country in flocks of varying numbers. For the study of the food habits of this grosbeak, 127 stomachs collected in 14 States and Canada were available. Of these 88 were taken in the winter months (october to March, inclusive), or at the time when the birds commonly appear about human habitations. The remaining 39 were taken in summer. Winter food. - Ornithologists who have been fortunate enough to observe this interesting bird report that the chief elements in the diet are various kinds of wild fruit, seeds of ash, maple, box elder, and conifers, and buds. Except for this last item these observa tions are verified by stomach examination. No buds were found in the stomachs, and this seems to indicate that the bud-eating habit is not so general as has been supposed. It is worthy of note that about 50 stomachs taken in Ontario in the winter of 1889 - 90, and examined by various members of the Canadian Institute, contained no buds.2 It was found that seeds of several different trees and shrubs constituted the food supply of the birds while they re mained in that locality. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.