COMMON CROW-BLACKBIRD. 195 



the middle of November. Thus assembled from the north 

 and west in increasing numbers, they wholly overrun, at 

 times the warmer maritime regions, where they assemble 

 to pass the winter in the company of their well known 

 cousins the Red-winged Troopials or Blackbirds ; for 

 both impelled by the same predatory appetite, and love 

 of comfortable winter quarters, are often thus accidental- 

 ly associated in the plundering and gleaning of the plan- 

 tations. The amazing numbers in which the present 

 species associate are almost incredible. Wilson relates 

 that on the *20th of January, a few miles from the banks 

 of the Roanoke in Virginia, he met with one of those 

 prodigious armies of Blackbirds, which, as he approach- 

 ed, rose from the surrounding fields with a noise like 

 thunder, and descending on the stretch of road before 

 him, covered it and the fences completely with black ; 

 rising again, after a few evolutions, they descended 

 on the skirt of a leafless wood, so thick as to give the 

 whole forest, for a considerable extent, the appearance of 

 being shrouded in mourning, the numbers amounting 

 probably to many hundreds of thousands. Their notes 

 and screams resembled the distant sound of a mighty 

 cataract, but strangely attuned into a musical cadence, 

 which rose and fell with the fluctuation of the breeze, like 

 the magic harp of .^olus. 



Their depredations on the maize crop or Indian corn 

 commence almost with the planting. The infant 

 blades no sooner appear than they are hailed by the 

 greedy Blackbird as the signal for a feast ; and, without 

 hesitation, thev descend on the fields, and resale them- 

 selves with the sweet and sprouted seed, rejecting and 

 scattering the blades around as an evidence of their mis^ 

 chief and audacity. Again, about the beginning of Au- 

 gust, while the grain is in the milky state, their attacks 



