ICTERIDJE: AMERICAN STARLINGS ; BLACKBIRDS, ETC. 



399 



parts shading from color of the upper through grayish-olive and olive-gray to sordid whitish, 

 purest on the middle of the belly. Inner webs of wing-quills fuscous ; tail the same, but more 

 glossed with greenish, and sometimes showing traces of crosswise watering with darker waves, 

 as often seen in the song span-ow. Whole bend and lining of wing briglit clear yellow. Crown 

 like back, with two broad stripes of dull rufous from nostrils to nape ; a similar rufous stripe 

 behind eye, sometimes traceable past eye to the lore, then defining a superciliary line of light 

 olive-gray or whitish. A whitish eye-ring. Upper mandible light brown, lower drying 

 yellowish; feet pale. Length 6.25-6.75 (not 5.50, as in Baird) ; extent 8.50-9.00; wing 

 2.40-2.75 ; tail the same; bill 0.50; tarsus 0.90; middle toe and claw 0.75. 9 said to diflFer 

 immaterially, and .young to lack the head-stripes. Young, first plumage : Above, mixed brown 

 and olive-tawny ; wings brown, edged with olive, the coverts edged and tipped with tawny ; 

 breast like back ; belly tawny. Texas, in Lower Rio Grande Valley. Inhabits shrubbery, 

 chaparral, and close cover of all kinds, where it is difficult to discover, owing to its quiet ways 

 and greenish tints. Keeps near the ground, but builds a domed nest of twigs and grasses in 

 bushes and low trees ; two broods arc reared in May-June, and Aug.-Scpt. Eggs 2-4, pure 

 white, unmarked, averaging 0.85 X 0.65, but from 0.75-0.90 by 0.60-0.70. 



17. Family ICTERID^ : American Starlings: Blackbirds, etc. 



Cultrirostral Oscines tvith 9 prima' 

 ries. — A family of moderate extent, 

 confined to America, where it repre- 

 sents the Sturnidce, or Starlings of 

 the Old World. It consists of the 

 Blackbirds and Orioles, among the 

 former being included the Bobolinks, 

 Cow-birds, and Meadow " Larks." 

 It is nominally composed of 15U 

 species, half of which may prove 

 valid, distributed among 50 genera 

 or subgenera, of which one-fourth 

 may be considered worthy of reten- 

 tion. The relationships are very close 

 - ^^a^^~ with the Fringillida;, on the one 



'^^~- ^^^Skr- hand ; on the otlier, they grade 



Fig. 256. ~ A tyvical Icterus (I. buUocki). (After Audubon). toward the Crows (Comd«). They 

 share with Fringilline birds the characters of angulated commissure and 9 developed pri- 

 maries, and this distinguishes them from all the other families whatsoever ; but the distinc- 

 tions from the Fringillidce are not easily expressed. In fact, I know of no character that 

 wiU relegate the Bobolink and Cowbird to the IcteridcB rather than to the Fringillidce, 

 in the cuiTent acceptation of these terms. In general, however, the Icteridce are cidtrirostral 

 rather than strictly conirostral Oscines, having that cutting rather than crushing style of 

 bill seen in perfection in the crows, toward which some of the Icteridce approach ; being thus 

 distinguished by the length, acutpness, and not strictly conical shape of the unnotched, 

 unbristled bill, which has a peculiar extension of the culmen on the forehead dividing the 

 prominent antiae of close-set velvety feathers that reach to or on the nasal scale — a diaracter 

 well exhibited in Sturnella, for instance. In length, the bill usually equals if it does not exceed 

 the head ; the tip is unnotched, the rictus unbristled, the commissure obtusely but evidiintly 

 angulated. The bill is shortest and most fringilline in Dolichonijx and Molothnis ; most aeiit' 

 in the Orioles (Icterus), where it is sometimes actually decurved; most crow-like in t ■ 



