all 
Bae ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
If approached, it flies a short distance into a low tree, and 
watches the intruder, uttering its alarm-note check, — some- 
times, cheek-che wéech or check che wéecha. This note is 
uttered by both sexes, and seems to be the only song pos- 
sessed by either. I have observed ‘them carefully, not only 
in the spring, but during the breeding season and in the 
autumn, and I never heard them emit any other. Both 
sexes incubate, and manifest great anxiety when the nest is 
approached; the males flying and scolding over the head 
of the intruder, in the manner of the Red-winged Blackbird. 
As I paddled my canoe up beneath one of the nests de- 
scribed above, the parent bird remained sitting, almost until 
my hand touched the limb on which the structure was 
placed. On flying off, she uttered a chattering cry, almost 
exactly like that of the female Redwing when disturbed 
in a similar manner. 
Karly in September, the old and young birds collect in 
small detached flocks, and frequent the same localities that 
they haunt in spring, from which they occasionally visit old 
cornfields and stubble-fields, where they catch grasshoppers 
and other insects, and eat the seed of weeds and such grains 
as are left by the farmer after harvesting. 
They remain in southern New England until early in 
November. 
QUISCALUS, VrerLtor. 
Quiscalus, ViEILLoT, Analyse (1816). (Gray.) (Type Gracula quiscala, L.) 
Bill as long as the head, the culmen slightly curved, the gonys almost straight; 
the edges of the bill inflected and rounded; the commissure quite strongly ‘sinuated; 
outlines of tarsal scutelle well defined on the sides; wings shorter than the tail, 
sometimes much more so; tail long, the feathers conspicuously and decidedly gradu- 
ated. Colors black. 
QUISCALUS VERSICOLOR.— Vieillot. 
The Crow Blackbird; Purple Grakle. 
Gracula quiscala, Linneeus. Syst. Nat., I. (1766) 165. Wils. Am. Orn., III. 
(1811) 44. 
Quiscalus versicolor, Vieillot. Analyse? (1816). Jb., Nouv. Dict., XXVIII. 
(1819) 488. Nutt. Man., I. (1832) 194. Aud. Orn. Biog., I. (1881) 85; V. (1838) 481. 
