222 KNOWING BIRDS THROUGH STORIES 



army worms, those caterpillars that form in numberless 

 bands and march through our fields destroying everything. 

 When the babes arriTe^ however, he prefers to feed them on 

 young grasshoppers. Those who have watched him feed 

 his young, patiently noting hour after hour and day after 

 day what he feeds, claim he has a great preference for 

 green grasshoppers — not any particular kind of green 

 grasshoppers, but just green ones — not feeding brown ones 

 once out of a dozen times. 



After the mating season is over '^Robert of Lincoln,^' 

 as he is sometimes called, loses his fine feathers and be- 

 comes a dull brown not much different from his mate. 

 Now with his family he flies away to the Southland, on 

 his way to South America to winter. On the way he is 

 not found in the edge of meadows or by the roadsides 

 swinging on a thistle and singing his jolly, rollicking song. 

 Instead he gathers in the Carolina rice fields in enormous 

 numbers, feeding on rice until he is almost too fat to fly. 

 Apparently he is so fond of rice that he forgets all his 

 good manners and his caution as well and does not even 

 leave the field to roost. Doubtless this over-fondness for 

 rice is responsible in two ways for the fact that large num- 

 bers are destroyed in some parts of the country. First, it 

 makes him so fat that his carcass is considered a very 

 toothsome delicacy; and second, roosting as he does in 

 enormous numbers in the rice fields, he becomes an easy 

 prey to the men who are hired to hunt for him. 



A man will take a torch or a brilliant flashlight, a tow 

 sack, and a short broad paddle, and start for the rice field. 

 Holding the sack mouth wide open under one arm and 

 carrying the torch in his hand he moves slowly through the 

 rice field. The light blinds poor bobolink and at the same 



