The Birds' Calendar 



centrated in its throat ; yet, like many another 

 supposititious and execrable vocalist, it persists in 

 trying to sing. When a large number of them 

 lift up their voices together it certainly makes 

 what someone has aptly called a good wheal- 

 barrow chorus. Wherever they ap{)ear they 

 show themselves vulgarly at home until they 

 leave in the fall. Considering what an un- 

 mitigated nuisance they have become by their 

 injury to the crops and to the life of other 

 birds, and with no other gift than handsome 

 plumage to commend them, it seems impossible 

 to speak a kinder word for the grackles than to 

 say that, like the butcher-bird, they are chiefly 

 instructive as showing what a bird ought not 

 to be. And yet even a grackle can somewhat 

 quicken the pulse in March. 



No sooner does the snow disappear from a 

 sunny and sheltered spot than a flush of green 

 overspreads it, and the typical colors of winter 

 and summer are now alternating, over all the 

 fields and woods, in picturesque patchwork. 

 Snow-birds are becoming numerous, and on the 

 morning of the i6th appeared the first true mi- 



