224 NORTH AMERIC.'VN BIRDS. 



idauters. In tlie early seasou they seek their food among the large salt 

 marshes of the seaboard, and along the muddy banks of creeks and rivers. 

 They do great damage to the rice plantations, both when the grain is in the 

 soft state and afterwards when tlie ripened grain is stacked. They also feed 

 very largely upon the small crabs called tiddlers, so coraniou in all the mud 

 flats, earthworms, various insects, shrimps, and other at^uatic forms of the 

 like character. 



A few of these Ijirds are resident througliout the year, though the 

 greater ])art retire farther south during a jwrtion of the winter. They 

 return in February, in full plumage, when tliey mate. They resort, by pairs 

 and in companies, to certain fa\'orite breeding-places, where they begin to 

 construct their nests. They do not, however, even in Florida, begin to breed 

 before April. They build a large and clumsy nest, made of very coarse 

 and miscellaneous materials, chiefly sticks and fragments of drj' weeds, 

 sedges, and strips of bark, lined with finer stems, fibrous roots, and gi-asses, 

 and have from three to five eggs. 



It is a very singular but well-established characteristic of this species, 

 that no sooner is tlieir nest completed and inculjation commenced than the 

 male birds all desert their mates, and, joining one another in flocks, keep 

 apart from tlie females, feediug liy themselves, until they are joined by the 

 young birds and their mothers in the fall. 



These facts and this trait of character in tliis species have been fully con- 

 firmed by the ol)servations of l)v. Bachman of Charleston. In 1832 he 

 visited a breeding-locality of these birds. On a single Smilax bush he found 

 more than thirty nests of the Grakles, from three to five feet apart, some 

 of them not more than fifteen inches above the water, and only females were 

 seen about the nests, no males luaking their appearance. Dr. Bachman also 

 visited colonies of these nests placed upon live-oak trees thirty or forty feet 

 IViiin the ground, and carefully watched the manners of the old birds, liut 

 has never found any males in the vicinity of their nest.s after the eggs had 

 been laid. They always keep at a distance, feeding in flocks in the marslies, 

 leaving tlie females to take charge of their nests and young. They have Ixit 

 one brood in a season. 



As these birds fly, in loose flocks, they continually utter a peculiar cry, 

 which Mr. ^Vutlubon states resembles or may be represented hj kirrick, crirl; 

 crick. Tlieir usual notes are harsh, resembling loud, shrill wliistles, and are 

 frequently accompanied with their ordinary cry of crick-crick-cree. In tlie 

 love-season these notes are said to 1)6 more pleasing, and are changed into 

 sounds which Audubon states resemble tirit, tint, titiri-titiri-titiree, rising 

 from low to high with great regularity and emphasis. The cry of the young 

 bird, when just able to fly, he compares to the whistling cry of soiue kind 

 of frogs. 



The males are charged by Mr. Audulion with attacking birds of other 

 species, driving them from their nests and sucking their etrgs. 



