FIRST-COMERS. 5D 
by the spring rains. Their destruction of insects—especial- 
ly during May, when their young are in the nest—is enor- 
mous; yet their forays upon the cornfields, I fear, overbal- 
ance the good done the farmer by putting an end to grubs 
noxious to his crops. 
“The depredations committed by these birds are almost 
wholly on Indian-corn at different stages. As soon ‘as its 
blades appear above the ground after it has been planted, 
the grakles 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 a gun: 
they only fly from one part of the field to another. And 
again, as soon 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.” - Wilson saw fields in which more than half 
the corn was thus ruined. 
These 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 thousand. 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 arose, he states, 
from the surrounding fields with a noise like thunder, and, 
