TRAVELS OF THE BIRBS. 141 



day in April I found a large assembly of chat- 

 terino" red-wino:ed blackbirds in the willows of 

 a Louisiana swamp, a few miles west of New 

 Orleans ; their conduct w^as precisely like their 

 conduct in the North when in autumn they 

 are making arrangements for the trip to their 

 winter home in the South. A few weeks later 

 I found a company of male bobolinks in north- 

 ern Alabama holding counsel in the treetops 

 and piping farewell to the rice and cotton iiekls 

 before taking wing for the meadows and clover 

 fields of the North. Perhaps some of them 

 were the same birds which I found tinkling so 

 gayly about my own home in Ohio a week later. 

 As has been said, it was the male bobo- 

 links only that were holding the conference 

 in Alabama. It is an odd fact that the males 

 of many species of birds arrive first at their 

 summer homes, and are followed a few days 

 later by the sedate females, and then the 

 mating begins in real earnest. Why both 

 sexes do not come together is a problem that 

 I have not yet solved. In the case of other 

 species, such as warblers and sparrows, the 

 males and females journey in company, the 

 selecting of mates often taking place while the 

 birds are en route, or even before their travels 

 are begun. 



