290 FACULTIES OF BIRDS. 
further mentions that, in September, 1725, he was 
lying upon the deck of a sloop in a bay at Andros 
island, where he and the company with him dis- 
tinctly heard, for three successive nights, the flight 
of these birds, whose note is plainly distinguishable 
from others, passing over head northerly, which is 
their direct way from Cuba to Carolina. This led 
him to conclude that, after partaking of the earlier 
crop of rice in Cuba, they proceed over the sea to 
Carolina with the same object, the rice being there 
ready for them. 
The same writer speaks of the bluewing teal, a 
bird which, in the month of August, comes in great 
numbers to Carolina, and remains until the rice, on 
which they feed, is gathered in, in the month of 
October. In Virginia, where no rice grew, they 
fed on a kind of wild oat, growing in the marshes, 
and in both instances became extremely fat. 
The same observant naturalist, in his fine work 
on the natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the 
Bahama Islands, gives an account of a migratory 
‘bird, which he calls the ricebird. The following is 
an abridgment of his account: In the beginning of 
‘September, while the grain of rice is yet soft and 
milky, innumerable flights of these birds arrive from 
some remote parts, to the great detriment of the in- 
habitants. In the year 1740, an inhabitant near 
Ashley River had forty acres of rice so devoured 
by them that he was in doubt whether the quantity 
they had left was worth the expense of gathering in. 
They are in Carolina esteemed more delicate eat- 
ing than any other bird. When they first arrive 
they are lean, but become in a few days so exces- 
sively fat, that they fly sluggishly and with difficulty, 
and, when shot, frequently break with the fall: they 
continue ‘three weeks, and retire by the time that 
the rice begins to harden. He mentions it as a 
very singular circumstance, that the henbird alone 
comes in the September visit. Seeing them .to be 
