Bobolink {DoUchonyx orizivorus) 



By Elizabeth and Joseph Grinnell 



"The Happiest Bird of Our Spring." 



Length, about 7 inches. 



Range : Breeds from Ohio northeast to Nova Scotia, north to Manitoba, 

 and northwest to British Columbia, winters in South America. 



Habits and economic status: When American writers awoke to the 

 beauty and attractiveness of our native birds, among the first to be enshrined 

 in song and story was the bobolink. Few species show such striking con- 

 trasts in the color of the sexes, and few have songs more unique and whim- 

 sical. In its northern home the bird is loved for its beauty and its rich 

 melody; in the South it earns deserved hatred by its destructiveness. Bobo- 

 links reach the southeastern coast of the United States the last half of April 

 just as rice is sprouting and at once begin to pull up and devour the sprout- 

 ing kernels. Soon they move on to their northern breeding grounds, where 

 they feed upon insects, weed seeds, and a little grain. When the young are 

 well on the wing, they gather in flocks with the parent birds and gradually 

 move southward, being then generally known as reed birds. They reach the 

 rice fields of the Carolinas about August 20, when the rice is in the milk. 

 Then until the birds depart for South America planters and birds fight for 

 the crop, and in spite of constant watchfulness and innumerable devices for 

 scaring the birds a loss of 10 per cent of the rice is the usual result. 



Common summer resident, sexes, unlike ; nest, made on the ground, of 

 grasses ; eggs, four to seven. 



He was just a bird to start with, half blackbird and the other half spar- 

 row, with some of the meadow-lark's ways of getting along. As to the 

 naming of him, everybody settled that matter at random, until one day he 

 grew tired of being called nicknames and named himself. 



Think of having "skunk-blackbird" called after a fellow when he de- 

 serves the title no more than half a dozen of his feathered friends! He could 

 never imagine what gave him the disagreeable epithet, unless it be his own 

 individual hatred for the animal whose name clung to him like mud. 



To be sure, the coat of the bird was striped, something like that of the 

 detestable beastie ; but so were the coats of many other birds, and he could 

 never tell why he should be called a blackbird, either. 



True, he loved the marshes for personal reasons ; but who has seen a 

 blackbird twist its toes around a reed stalk and sing like mad? 



So, as we said, he named himself, constituting himself a town crier on 

 behalf of his own concerns. "Bobolink ! bobolink !" As often as the black- 

 bird attempted to talk of himself, bobolink chimed in and drowned every 



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