CONTINENTAL RUSTY BLACKBIRD 295 



drop down to the banks of the stream to feed or drink. But they never 

 spend the night here; they are always restless and active, and they 

 move away before darkness comes, to find some other roosting place 

 for the night. 



Winter. — Most of the rusty blackbirds spend the winter in the 

 Southern States, but there are several records of individuals, or even 

 small flocks, surviving the rigors of our northern winters. A Nova 

 Scotia record has been mentioned. John C Phillips (1912) gives 

 several winter records for Massachusetts and tells of seeing a flock of 

 18 that spent the whole of a severe winter in Essex County. "They 

 were getting most of their food, apparently, from a large pile of horse 

 manure." 



From Alberta, Frank L. Farley (1932) writes: "Eleven Rusty 

 Blackbirds spent the entire winter of 1919-20 in the stockyards in 

 Camrose. On November 6th, 1919, the thermometer registered 24 

 below zero. Towards the end of January the cold was intense, the 

 mercury on several occasions dropping to 55 below zero, yet the 

 blackbirds appeared to get along just as well as the snow-bunting 

 with which they fed." 



At Buckeye Lake, Ohio, according to Trautman (1940), "wintering 

 individuals fed about the water as long as it was free of ice, but when- 

 ever the lakes, ponds, and streams were ice-covered, they were to be 

 found in fields of uncut corn or of rank weeds near brushy thickets. 

 Wintering birds roosted in cattail marshes and in the denser and more 

 brushy inland swamps." 



Skinner (1928) says that, in North Carolina, "during the winter 

 from November to February there was a flock of fifty Rusty Black- 

 birds almost constantly about the fields near the Pinehurst Dairy. 

 This flock was composed of both sexes, but began to split up and 

 scatter about the first of March. Although these birds were usually 

 on the ground, they often alighted on low trees — oaks, pines, gums, 

 dogwoods and sycamores — and on board fences and the wires and 

 posts of wire fences. Occasionally they are seen on race-courses or 

 golf links, and often about streams or the thickets over streams. 

 Still it is quite noticeable that these birds prefer the uplands with 

 other blackbirds more than any other locality." 



In South Carolina, "great numbers of Rusty Blackbirds frequent the 

 rice plantations in winter, associating with Florida Grackles (Quiscalus 

 quiscula aglaeus) and Boat-tailed Grackles {Megaquiscalus major) 

 where stacks of rice have been left in the fields," according to Arthur 

 T. Wayne (1910). 



380928—57 20 



