FAMILY Icteride. 
with the Barn Swallow. Perhaps his constant foraging 
in the meadow grass has put him out of practice on the 
wing. However that may be, it is a significant fact that 
he takes the shortest sea route to South America, and 
the evidence goes to show he is unable to sustain him- 
self in a very long flight. He arrives in New York from 
the south about the first of May, and proceeds up the 
Hudson and Connecticut River Valleys to Canada. AI- 
though he is a very common bird in the vicinity of Han- 
over, N. H., he is extremely uncommon in the Valley 
of the Pemigewasset, at Plymouth, scarcely twenty- 
seven miles due east; but again in Belknap County, the 
same distance southeast, he is abundant. 
All sentiment aside, it is impossible to state the true 
value of the Bobolink relatively with agriculture. Mr. 
Beal * says that he destroys $2,000,000 worth of rice ina 
year, and Mr. Chapman says $3,000,000. Either way we 
take it, the outlook is bad for the rice grower of the 
South. In the North the bird subsists upon countless 
varieties of insects and the seeds of useless plants, but it 
would be difficult to prove that this beneficent work has 
a money value which mounts up into the millions! I 
quote from Mr. Beal the state of the case in the South: 
‘¢ Were the rice fields at a distance from the line of mi- 
gration, . . . they would probably never be mo- 
lested; but lying as they do directly in its path, they 
form a recruiting ground, where the birds can rest and 
accumulate flesh and strength for the long sea flight 
which awaits them in their course to South America.” 
Then in regard to the two million dollars, Mr. Beal adds: 
‘If these figures are any approximation to the truth, 
the ordinary farmer will not believe that the Bobolink 
benefits the northern half of the country nearly as much 
as it damages the southern half. . . . But even if 
the bird really does more harm than good, what is the 
remedy? For years the rice planters have been employ- 
ing men and boys to shoot the birds and drive them away 
from the fields, but in spite of the millions slain every 
*See Farmers’ Bulletin No. 54, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, en 
titled, ‘‘Some Common Birds,” by F. E. L. Beal, B.S. 
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