PURPLE GRAKLE. 157 



fields, and begin to pull up and regale themselves on the seed, scatter- 

 ing the green blades around. "While thus eagerly employed, the ven- 

 geance of the gun sometimes overtakes them ; but these disasters are 

 soon forgotten, and those 



who live to get away, 



Return to steo,!, another day." 



About the beginning of August, when the young ears are in their milky 

 state, they are attacked with redoubled eagerness by the Grakles and 

 Red-wings, in formidable and combined bodies. They descend like a 

 blackening, sweeping tempest, on the corn, dig off the external covering 

 of twelve or fifteen coats of leaves, as dexterously as if done by the 

 hand of man, and having laid bare the ear, leave little behind to the 

 farmer but the cobs, and shrivelled skins that contained their favorite 

 fare. I have seen fields of corn of many acres, where more than one- 

 half was thus ruined. Indeed the farmers in the immediate vicinity of 

 the rivers Delaware and Schuylkill, generally allow one-fourth of this 

 crop to the Blackbirds, among whom our Grakle comes in for his full 

 share. During these depredations, the gun is making great havoc 

 among their numbers, which has no other effect on the survivors than to 

 send them to another field, or to another part of the same field. This 

 system of plunder and of retaliation continues until November, when 

 towards the middle of that month they begin to sheer off towards the 

 south. The lower parts of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and 

 Georgia, are the winter residences of these flocks. Here numerous 

 bodies, collecting together from all quarters of the interior and northern 

 districts, and darkening the air with their numbers, sometimes form one 

 congregated multitude of many hundred thousands. A few miles from 

 the banks of the Roanoke, on the twentieth of January, I met with one 

 of those prodigious armies of Grakles. They rose from the surround- 

 ing fields with a noise like thunder, and descending on the length of 

 road before me, covered it and the fences completely with black ; and 

 when they again rose, and after a few evolutions descended on the 

 skirts of the high timbered w^oods, at tliat time destitute of leaves, they 

 produced a most singular and striking effect ; the whole trees for a con- 

 siderable extent, from the top to the lowest branches, seeming as if 

 hung in mourning ; tlieir notes and screaming the meanwliilc resembling 

 the distant sound of a great cataract, but in more musical cadence, 

 swelling and dying away on the ear according to the fluctuation of the 

 breeze. In Kentucky, and all along the Mississippi, from its junction 

 with the Ohio to the Balize, I found numbers of these birds, so that 

 the Purple Grakle may be considered as a very general inhabitant of 

 the territory of the United States. 



Every industrious farmer complains of the mischief committed on his 



