392 U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



says of its haunts: "Many of the fish ponds in this region have a dense 

 growth of young cypress trees around their margins and in their 

 shallower portions, the trees average fifteen to twenty feet in height 

 and with their lower branches overhanging the water, and here the 

 Florida Grackle breeds regularly. Its favorite breeding spot is, how- 

 ever, some old fish or mill pond where the dam has broken and the 

 entire bed grown up into a thicket of young trees and bushes. Here 

 it breeds in considerable colonies." 



In Florida, this grackle is an abundant resident over the entire State, 

 including the Keys as far south as Key West, according to Arthur H. 

 Howell (1932), who says: "The Florida Grackle inhabits a variety of 

 situations and adapts itself to very diverse conditions. The birds are 

 usually abundant around the towns and villages, nesting in orange 

 groves, in pines or live oaks in dooryards, or along roadsides. In the 

 wilderness, they often nest in the smaller cypress swamps, or open pine 

 forests, palmetto hammocks, or in bushes growing in or near a pond 

 or stream." 



Thomas D. Burleigh (1925) found about a dozen pairs living on 

 Billy's Island in Okefenokee Swamp, in southern Georgia near the 

 Florida line. This island "is merely a bit of solid land in the middle of 

 seemingly endless miles of swamp, and is characterized, as are the 

 other scattered islands, by what was once a fine virgin stand of long- 

 leaf pine {Pinus palustris)." The birds seemed to show a decided 

 preference for the remaining trees near the logging camp. 



H. H. Kopman (1915) says of it in Louisiana: "This is the only form 

 of the common Crow Blackbird that occurs in the swampy coastal 

 section of the State, so far as I have been able to learn. It is abundant 

 and occurs in practically all situations except the open marsh. It is 

 often found in great flocks in the wet woods in winter and early spring. 

 It nests chiefly in the neighborhood of habitation, especially in groves 

 of live oaks, and water oaks." 



Nesting. — Burleigh (1925) says of the nests found in the tall 

 longleaf pines on Billy's Island: 



The nests, never more than one to a tree, ranged from twenty-five to fully a 

 hundred feet from the ground, some of them being at the outer end of the upper 

 branches where they were quite inaccessible. The average height was fifty feet, 

 and they were usually in a crotch of one of the limbs eight or ten feet from the 

 trunk. I managed to reach three of them, and found in two five eggs and in the 

 third four, all of them half incubated. The nests proved very similar in con- 

 struction, being well built of gray usnea moss intermixed with dry pine needles 

 and grasses, coated on the inside with mud and then well lined with fine grasses. 

 In each case the female was incubating but flushed quietly and showed practically 

 no concern over the nest, disappearing and not being seen again. 



Referring to the nesting habits of this grackle in Florida, Bendire 

 (1895) writes: "Most of the nests found by Dr. Ralph were placed in 



