BIRDS OF THE GRASS LANDS. 



457 



Fig. 5. — Meadow Laek. 



row is another East and West form,, spreading over the dry central 

 plains and presenting a paler variety in the latter region. The 

 familiar song sparrow, whose bright, cheery ditty enlivens the 

 closing days of winter, though a haunter of garden shrubbery and 

 brier patches, is a bird of the grass, building its nest upon the 

 ground. It is widely distributed over the continent, and in the 

 West is broken up into a number of geographical races. 



A remarkably interesting case is that of the black-throated 

 bunting or dicksissel. This bird is one of the most abundant 

 species in the grass lands of the Mississippi Valley and on the 

 prairies of Kansas and Ne- 

 braska. In the time of the 

 ornithologist Wilson and 

 to within fifteen or twenty 

 years ago, it was an abun- 

 dant bird in the fields of 

 the Eastern States. Now 

 it is rarely seen along the 

 Atlantic seaboard. Some 

 years ago I knew of several 

 pairs breeding each spring 



in a restricted area in southeastern Pennsylvania. Timothy and 

 clover fields were their favorite nesting places, and a bird-loving 

 friend who had watched these pairs from year to year suggested 

 a cause for their increasing scarcity. About the time the young 

 were hatched the remorseless reaper appeared upon the scene, and 

 the keen-edged knife soon laid waste the home of the unfortu- 

 nate dicksissel. It was not long before these birds disappeared 

 altogether from their once favorite fields, and a probable clew to 

 the cause seemed to point toward the reaping machine. This I 

 have never been able to verify, as the harvests on their prairie 

 home must be equally as destructive unless a much larger terri- 

 tory or a difference in the times of hatching and reaping has pre- 

 vented the rapid destruction of the young birds. Be this as it 

 may, the evidence before us goes to show that the grass-loving 

 dicksissel came early from the Western prairies to the newly 

 opened fields of the East, and has abandoned them for its Western 

 home, disgusted, we may imagine, with the innovations of civil- 

 ized man. 



The meadow lark of the East is replaced on the Western 

 plains by a lighter form. Our curious cowbird, stealing its egg 

 into the nests of other birds, is -abundantly spread over the con- 

 tinent, and the remarkable habit of associating with cattle for the 

 purpose of feeding upon the flies that swarm about them sug- 

 gests the question, Was this habit acquired since the settlement 

 of the country, or did the birds haunt the herds of buffalo on the 



