No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 341 



is coming up in tlie spring; but it does not do much damage tlien, 

 but passes on up and comes for nesting to this part of Pennsyl- 

 vania and northward. 



I was out a few minutes yesterday afternoon around the fields 

 here, and 1 found a good many bobolinks were present here now — 

 it is called bobolink up here; with us, in Washington, it is called 

 the reed bird, from its habit of staying in the reeds at night; and 

 down in the Southern states it is called the rice-birds. It nests 

 from northern Pennsylvania and southern New York northward, 

 principally in New England and the northern states up into southern 

 Canada, and throughout all that region it is one of the best loved 

 of the birds. It is one of the finest singers we have and throughout 

 all that region it is very carefully protected both by law and by 

 custom and a man would no more think of killing the bobolinks 

 on his place than he would the dog or the cat, and so it has 

 a care-free existence. Through the summer it raises a good family, 

 and when the young are full grown, those small family parties 

 unite into larger parties, and those into still larger as they move 

 toward the south, and by the time they get into the Southern states 

 they have assembled into very large flocks. And as I say, years 

 ago when South Carolina was devoted to rice growing, the bobo- 

 links were very injurious on those rice fields; they used to get 

 down there in the fall migration when the rice was in the milk. 

 Rice grows on the top of a stalk like oats and the bobolinks, settling 

 down on those rice fields to eat the rice, would settle on the stalks 

 and their sharp claws would pierce the grain and let out the milk 

 and they actually did more desti'uction wdth the claws than they 

 did with the bill, and at first, in the early days, the rice growers used 

 to try to kill them but they found they were too numerous for that 

 and they have devoted their energies just to making a noise to keep 

 the bobolinks in the air; they station the little darkey boys in the 

 fields with guns to fire them ofl' and make a noise and keep those 

 bobolinks in the air and you can get some idea of their numbers 

 from the fact that one planter in one year used up five tons of 

 gunpowder, 10,000 lbs. of powder, just for keeping those bobolinks 

 in the air off his rice field, and it was estimated that when they 

 were at their worst they did a damage of |2, 000,000 a year. 



Well now that has practically all ceased. South Carolina has 

 ceased to be a rice growing state, and though the bobolinks go back 

 and forth over that state as they did before, the investigation made 

 by our office a couple of years ago failed to show any particular 

 damage that was done by that bird. The amount of good that a 

 bird can do depends, of course, principally on its habits; but also on 

 the time of the year that the bird is with you and the two kinds 

 of woodpeckers given here, the smaller one below, the downy, and 

 the larger one above, are our best conservators of tree growth. 

 They are with you all the year and their food consists almost en- 

 tirely of the insects that would be injurious to the trees. 



And here is another little bird, a great favorite of mine, the 

 little chickadee, that is also one of the beneficial birds. It is small, 

 it spends its time around in the trees, and through the winter 

 time particularly, lives very largely on the eggs of the insects that 

 it finds secreted in the cracks and crevices of the bark. 



The cuckoo is not a very handsome bird, but he has the habit 

 of that toad that was spoken of by the speaker last night, of taking 

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