THE BOBOLINK 



South America, to southern Brazil, Paraguay, and 

 Bolivia. 



HAD Robert Louis Stevenson written the biography 

 of a bobolink, he might have given him the 

 names of his immortal Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for the 

 bird seems to possess a dual nature, and to bear totally 

 different reputations in the North and the South. When 

 he visits Canada and northern United States in May, 

 dressed in his gay wedding finery, he is greeted with joy. 

 Few more delightful birds are to be found than this at- 

 tractive, happy-hearted singer against whom no reproaches 

 are registered in the North. 



His song has been a favorite theme for poets and na- 

 ture-writers. Thoreau wrote: "One or two notes globe 

 themselves and fall in bubbles from his teeming throat. 

 It is as if he touched his harp within a vase of liquid mel- 

 ody, and when he lifted it out, the notes fell like bubbles 

 from the strings. Methinks they are the most liquidly 

 sweet and melodious sounds I ever heard." ^ 



The bobolink's habits in the North are almost beyond 

 reproach. Professor Beal writes: "In New England there 

 are few birds about which so much romance clusters as 

 this rollicking songster, naturally associated with the June 

 meadows; but in the South there are none on whose head 

 so many maledictions have been heaped on account of its 

 fondness for rice. During its sojourn in the Northern 

 States it feeds mainly upon insects and seeds of useless 

 plants; but while rearing its young, insects constitute its 

 chief food, and almost the exclusive diet of its brood. 

 After the young are able to fly, the whole family gathers 



1 From "Notes on New England Birds," by Thoreau, page 246. 



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