I lO SINGING BIRDS. 



mates. According to Richardson it is the beginning of June 

 when they arrive at their farthest boreal station in the 54th 

 degree. We observed them in the great western plains to the 

 base of the Rocky Mountains, but not in Oregon. Their win- 

 tering resort appears to be rather the West Indies than the 

 tropical continent, as their migrations are observed to take 

 place generally to the east of Louisiana, where their visits are 

 rare and irregular. At this season also they make their ap- 

 proaches chiefly by night, obeying, as it were, more distinctly, 

 the mandates of an overruling instinct, which prompts them to 

 seek out their natal regions ; while in autumn, their progress, 

 by day only, is alone instigated by the natural quest of food. 

 About the ist of May the meadows of Massachusetts begin to 

 re-echo their lively ditty. At this season, in wet places, and 

 by newly ploughed fields, they destroy many insects and their 

 larvae. According to their success in obtaining food, parties 

 often delay their final northern movement as late as the mid- 

 dle of May, so that they appear to be in no haste to arrive at 

 their destination at any exact period. The principal business 

 of their lives, however, the rearing of their young, does not 

 take place until they have left the parallel of the 40th degree. 

 In the savannahs of Ohio and Michigan, and the cool grassy 

 meadows of New York, Canada, and New England, they fix 

 their abode, and obtain a sufficiency of food throughout the 

 summer without molesting the harvest of the farmer, until the 

 ripening of the latest crops of oats and barley, when, in their 

 autumnal and changed dress, hardly now known as the same 

 species, they sometimes show their taste for plunder, and flock 

 together like the greedy and predatory Blackbirds. Although 

 they devour various kinds of insects and worms on their first 

 arrival, I have found that their frequent visits among the grassy 

 meadows were often also for the seeds they contain ; and they 

 are particularly fond of those of the dock and dandelion, the 

 latter of which is sweet and oily. Later in the season, and pre- 

 viously to leaving their native regions, they feed principally on 

 various kinds of grass-seeds, particularly those of the Panicums, 

 which are allied to millet. They also devour crickets and grass- 

 hoppers, as well as beetles and spiders. Their nest is fixed on 



