250 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME BIRDS 
are very faintly blue, with a few scrawls and often blotches 
(chiefly at the larger end) of dark brown, black, and rarely 
lilac. 
(c). The Red-winged Blackbirds pass the winter in many of 
the Southern States. Wilson, in recording his observations: 
there, says: ‘*Sometimes they appeared driving about like an 
enormous black cloud carried before the wind, varying its 
shape every moment. Sometimes suddenly rising from the 
fields around me with a noise like thunder; while the glittering 
of innumerable wings of the brightest vermilion amid the black 
cloud they formed, produced on these occasions a very striking 
and splendid effect. Then descending like a torrent, and cov- 
ering the branches of some detached grove, or clump of trees, 
the whole congregated multitude commenced one general con- 
cert or chorus, that I have plainly distinguished at the distance 
_of more than two miles, and when listened to at the interme- 
diate space of about a quarter of a mile, with a slight breeze 
of wind to swell and soften the flow of its cadences, was to me 
grand and even sublime. The whole season of winter that 
with most birds is passed in struggling to sustain life, in silent 
melancholy, is with the Red-wings one continued carnival. 
The profuse gleanings of the old rice, corn, and buckwheat 
fields, supply them with abundant food; at once, ready and 
nutritious; and the intermediate time is spent either in aerial 
manceuvres, or in grand vocal performances, as if solicitous to 
supply the absence of all the tuneful summer tribes, and to 
cheer the dejected face of nature with their whole combined 
powers of harmony.” Though Wilson does not deny the great 
injuries which these birds do to crops, where agriculture is 
extensively carried on, yet he estimates at the time of his 
writing that they ate, in four months spent in the United 
States, 16,200,000,000 noxious insects ! 
The Swamp Blackbirds are to be found in summer so far to 
the northward as the 57th parallel of latitude, though in many 
parts of northern New England altogether absent. They are 
sometimes the first birds to visit us in spring, though generally 
preceded by the Blue Birds. They are said to have reached 
