284 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



the stubble or grain fields, filling the air in passing clouds, or gathering 

 to sing in the leafless treetops along the roadsides or in the swampy 

 woods and roosting at night in the swamps or sloughs. As Beal 

 (1900) puts it: "One of the most familiar sights to the New England 

 schoolboy, and one that assures him that spring is really at hand, is a 

 tree full of blackbirds, all facing the same way and each one singing 

 at the top of its voice. These are rusty blackbirds, or rusty grackles, 

 which, in their spring journey to the north, have a way of beguiling 

 the tedium of their long flight by stopping and giving free concerts. 

 Every farmhouse by the wayside will have its visitors, and every 

 boy who hears them is eager to tell his mates that he has seen the 

 first flock of blackbirds." 



In eastern Massachusetts, according to William Brewster (1906) : 

 "The Rusty Blackbird comes to us from the south in early spring 

 about the time when Pickering's hyla begins peeping. The tinkling 

 notes of the Blackbird are, indeed, ever associated in my mind with 

 the bell-like call of the hyla, for at this season the two sounds are 

 usually heard together. Being pitched on nearly the same key, it is 

 not always easy to discriminate them, especially when a score of 

 Blackbirds and several hundred hylas are exercising their vocal organs 

 at once." 



Rev. J. H. Langille (1884) gives the following impression of the 

 spring flight : 



On the first day of May, 1880, as I stood on an iron bridge crossing a sluggish 

 stream of Tonawanda Swamp, I saw the Rusty Grakles (Scolecophagus ferrugineus) 

 constantly trooping by in immense numbers. They were moving in a very 

 leisurely manner, immense detachments constantly alighting. The large tract 

 of low land, covered with the alder, the willow and the osier, seemed alive with 

 them. The sombre wave, thus constantly rolling on, must have carried hundreds 

 of thousands over this highway in a day. Occasionally they would alight to feed 

 in the low, wet fields in the vicinity, making the earth black with their numbers. 

 * * * On being alarmed, either in the fields or in the bushes, these Grakles would 

 rise in a dense, black cloud, and with a rumbling sound like that of distant thunder. 



Courtship. — The following brief note by Dr. Charles W. Town- 

 send (1920) is all that I can find on this subject: "The courtship 

 of this bird, if such it may be called, is produced with apparently 

 great effort, wide open bill and spread tail, resulting in a series of 

 squeaking notes suggestive of an unoiled windmill — wat-chee e. At 

 times a sweet lower note, often double, is heard." 



J. A. Munro (1947) observed that two males in the top of a tree 

 "performed a simple display that consisted of stretching one wing 

 downward to its full extent, then whistling a single note." 



Nesting. — Frederic H. Kennard (1920) spent portions of five 

 seasons in northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, hunting 

 for nests of the rusty blackbird, and his excellent account of his 



