YO THE BIRDS OF NEW JERSEY. 



entire body plumage metallic bronze except the head, 

 neck and fore breast, which are blue or purple. The fe- 

 male Clrackle is much duller than the male. The young 

 during their first summer have scarcely a trace of metallic 

 coloring, being uniform dull black. 



The nest is built about thirty feet up a tree, although 

 also sometimes found in a bush or in a hole in a tree. It 

 is bulky but very compactly built of coarse grasses, lined 

 with finer grasses. The eggs are from three to six in 

 number, one and one-fifth by four- fifths of an inch in 

 size, very variable, but generally a pale blue or a blue 

 green, with brown and black scrawls; different sets in the 

 same colony are frequently very unlike. 



The birds breed on the Atlantic slope, generally in col- 

 onies, from Georgia to Massachusetts. The winter is 

 spent in the south, very few remaining here after the 

 first of November; they arrive here early in March. 



Their cry is a wheezy squeak and their call a rasping 

 chirp. 



These birds do a great deal of mischief in cornfields, but 

 partly make up for the injury they do by destroying rose 

 bugs, curculio. May beetles, grasshoppers, crickets and 

 locusts. 



Grebe^ MMolboelVs. — This is the largest of the Grebes 

 and is very seldom seen in New Jersey, occurring occa- 

 sionally during migrations. It is nineteen inches in 

 length; bill, two inches; the upper parts are of a dull 

 black and the under of a silvery white, generally with 

 more or less rusty red on the neck, except in young birds. 

 Grebes nest among the rushes and reeds, and the nest, 

 composed of a mass of decayed vegetation, is frequently 

 seen floating in the water. 



Hrehe^ Homed. — Length, thirteen inches; bill, three- 

 quarters of an inch; above, glossy black, tinged with gray; 

 head with tufts of feathers which project on each side 



