The Purple and the Bronzed Crackles 149 



yellow eyes that make you suspect they may 

 be witches in disguise. Their mates are a trifle 

 smaller and duller. 



When the trees are still leafless in earliest 

 spring and the ground is brown and cold, flocks 

 of blackbirds dot the bare trees or take shelter 

 from March winds among their favourite ever- 

 greens, or walk solemnly about on the earth 

 like small crows, feeding on fat white grubs 

 and beetles in a business-like way. They 

 are singularly joyless birds. A croaking, wheezy 

 whistle, like the sound of a cart wheel that needs 

 axle-grease, expresses whatever pleasure they 

 may have in life. 



Always sociable, living in flocks the entire 

 year through, it is in autumn only that they 

 band together in enormous numbers, and in 

 the West especially, do serious havoc in the 

 cornfields. However, they do incalculable good 

 as insect destroyers, so the farmers must for- 

 give the ''maize thieves." 



Was ever a family so ill-assorted as the black- 

 bird and oriole clan? What traits are common 

 to every member of it? Not one, that I know. 

 Some of the family, as you have seen, are gor- 

 geously clad, like the Baltimore oriole; some 

 quite plainly, like the cowbird; and although 

 black seems to be a prevalent colour in the 



