A SUMMER CHORUS 113 



link's notes have been called a species of musical 

 fireworks. 



Of his dress, Bryant sang: 



"Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest, 



Wearing a bright black wedding coat. 

 White are his shoulders and white his crest, 

 Hear him call in his merry note!" 



Add to this description that the neck and mid- 

 dle of the back are corn-yellow and the tail 

 feathers sharply pointed, and you have a good 

 picture of a feathered dandy. But how different 

 is the color of his little mate. Yet her "Quaker" 

 dress is much better adapted to her domestic 

 cares, sitting on the nest and tending the 

 youngsters among the brown grass stalks. The 

 color of her back always reminds me of the 

 brown of the Meadow Lark, another inhabitant 

 of the grass fields that surround our home. 

 Her dress above is olive-buff streaked with dark 

 brown and there are two distinct black stripes 

 on the head. The under parts are yellowish 

 white. At the moulting, which follows the nest- 

 ing season, the male changes to the colors of the 

 female, donning a traveling suit, as it were. 

 Then they gather in flocks and frequent the 

 grain fields, and by mid-August begins the long 

 journey to their winter home in far-away Brazil. 



As they travel through the Middle States, 

 they are known as Reed Birds, and farther 

 south as Rice Birds, from their feeding habits. 

 Under these names they are, alas! classed as 

 game birds, and thousands of their fat bodies 

 are eaten in the fall by Southern epicures. It 



