164 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



time Provinces to southern Newfoundland, southern Labrador, 

 Great Slave Lake and Prince Albert; west to base of Rocky 

 Mountains in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. 

 Winters chiefly in the Lower Mississippi Vallej^ south of lat. 

 35°, occasionally farther north. 



In Missouri the Bronzed Grackle is one of the common and 

 generally distributed summer residents on open land, nesting in 

 small colonies, preferably near human habitation. In south- 

 eastern Missouri they still nest in tree holes in deadenings; else- 

 where they choose evergreens and other heavily foliaged shade 

 trees for nesting sites. In the Ozarks, which were formerly 

 densely wooded, the species is still rare as a breeder, even in 

 places which have long been cleared and cultivated. As a winter 

 visitant the Bronzed Grackle is rare except along the Mississippi 

 River from St. Louis southward. Opposite St. Charles along 

 the bank of the Missouri River there is a large sv/ampy tract of 

 willows used as a winter roost for innumerable Redwings, and 

 with them hundreds of Bronzed Crackles have been seen going 

 even in the middle of January, in mild weather, but as their 

 numbers change constantly, there are hardly two days alike, 

 showing that they also use other roosts farther south, to which 

 they fly when the weather is not inviting northward. Should 

 weather conditions remain unfavorable the roost may remain 

 deserted or nearly so for weeks at a time, until a change sets in 

 when they appear again. Away from the roost they are seldom 

 met with, because they go far to favorite feeding grounds and 

 scatter over a large territory. Real migration begins in the 

 latter part of February and in early March in the southeast; 

 it reaches the central, and along the Mississippi River even the 

 northern, coimties in the second, less often in the third week of 

 the month, very rarely later, as in 1906, when winter reigned to 

 the end of March. The first-comors are probably mostly tran- 

 sients, bound for the far north, keep in dense flocks and roost in 

 the river bottoms. It is only after the bulk of the species has 

 invaded the state during the latter half of March, that the first 

 of our summer residents make their appearance on the breeding 

 grounds and announce that they intend to occupy them again 

 as soon as their mates have arrived. They return in the evening 

 to the common roost and, should the weather turn bad, are not 

 seen at th{;ir old stands again for days, but as soon as warm 

 weather sets in they return, are joined by the first females, and 

 mating begins with much chasing and noise making. The 



