186 OMNIVOROUS BIRDS. 



tial livery, and accompanied by troops of his companions, 

 who often precede the arrival of their more tardy mates.* 

 Their wintering resort appears to be rather the West In- 

 dies than the tropical continent, as their migrations are 

 observed to take place generally to the east of Louisiana, 

 where their visits are rare and irregular. t At this season 

 also they make their approaches chiefly by night, obeying, 

 as it were, more distinctly, the mandates of an overrul- 

 ing instinct, which prompts them to seek out their natal 

 regions ; while in autumn, their progress, by day only, is 

 alone instigated by the natural quest of food. About the 

 1st of May the meadows of Massachusetts begin to re- 

 echo their lively ditty. At this season, in wet places, and 

 by newly ploughed fields, they destroy many insects and 

 their larvae, but while on their way through the Southern 

 States, they cannot resist the temptation of feeding on the 

 early wheat and tender barley. According to their suc- 

 cess in this way, parties often delay their final northern 

 movement as late as the middle of May, so that they ap- 

 pear to be in no haste to arrive at their destination at any 

 exact period. The principal business of their lives how- 

 ever, the rearing of their young, does not take place until 

 they have left the parallel of the 40th degree. In the 

 savannahs of Ohio and Michigan, and the cool grassy 

 meadows of New York, Canada, and New England, they 

 fix their abode, and obtain a sufficiency of food throughout 

 the summer, without molesting the harvest of the farmer, 

 until the ripening of the latest crops of oats and barley, 

 when, in their autumnal and changed dress, hardly now 

 known as the same species, they sometimes show their 

 taste for plunder, and flock together like the greedy and 

 predatory Black-birds. Although they devour various 



* Bartram's Travels, p. 295. (Ed. London.) 



t Audubon, Ornithological Biography, i. p. 283. 



