ICTERID^ — THE ORIOLES. 217 



deeds of all birds are ever much more noticed and dwelt upon than their 

 beneficial acts. So it is, to an eminent degree, with the Crow Blackbird. 

 Very few seem aware of the vast amount of benefit it confers on the farmer, 

 but all know full well — and are bitterly prejudiced by the knowledge — 

 the extent of the damages this bird causes. 



They return to Pennsylvania about the middle of March, in large, loose 

 flocks, at that time frequenting the meadows and ploughed fields, and their 

 food then consists almost wholly of grubs, worms, etc., of which they de- 

 stroy prodigious numbers. In view of these services, and notwithstanding 

 the havoc they commit on the crops of Indian corn, Wilson states that he 

 should hesitate whether to consider these birds most as friends or as enemies, 

 as they are particularly destructive to almost all the noxious worms, grubs, 

 and caterpillars that infest the farmer's fields, which, were they to be allowed 

 to multiply unmolested, would soon consume nine tenths of all the produc- 

 tions of his labor, and desolate the country with the miseries of famine. 



The depredations committed by these birds are almost wholly upon Indian 

 corn, at different stages. As soon as its blades appear above tlie ground, 

 after it has been planted, these birds descend upon the fields, pull up the 

 tender plant, and devour the seeds, scattering the green blades around. It is 

 of little use to attempt to drive them away with the gun. They only fly 

 from one part of the field to another. And again, as ^oon as the tender corn 

 has formed, these flocks, now replenished by the young of the year, once more 

 swarm in the cornfields, tear off the husks, and devour the tender grains. AVil- 

 son has seen fields of corn in which more than half the corn was thus ruined. 



Tliese birds winter in immense numbers in the lower parts of Virginia, 

 North and South Carolina, and Georgia, sometimes forming one congregated 

 multitude of several hundred thousands. On one occasion Wilson met, on 

 the banks of the Roanoke, on the 20th of January, one of these prodigious 

 armies of Crow Blackbirds. They rose, he states, from the surrounding- 

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

 before him, they covered it and the fences completely with black. When 

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

 high timbered woods, they produced a most singular and striking effect. 

 Whole trees, for a consideral^le extent, from the top to the lowest branches, 

 seemed as if hung with mourning. Their notes and screaming, he adds, 

 seemed all the while like the distant sounds of a great cataract, but in a 

 more musical cadence. 



A writer in the American Naturalist (II. 326), residing in Newark, N. Y., 

 notes the advent of a large number of these birds to his village. Two built 

 their nest inside the spire of a church. Anotlier pair took possession of a 

 martin-house in the narrator's garden, forcibly expelling the rightful owners. 

 These same birds also attempted to plunder tlie newly constructed nests of 

 the Robins of their materials. They were, however, successfully resisted, the 

 Robins driving the Blackbirds away in all cases of contest. 



VOL. II. 28 



