The Birds’ Calendar 
centrated in its throat ; yet, like many another 
supposititious and execrable vocalist, it persists in 
trying to sing. When a large number of them 
lift up their voices together it certainly makes 
what someone has aptly called a good wheel- 
barrow chorus. Wherever they appear they 
show themselves vulgarly at home until they 
leave in the fall. Considering what an un- 
mitigated nuisance they have become by their 
injury to the crops and to the life of other 
birds, and with no other gift than handsome 
plumage to commend them, it seems impossible 
to speak a kinder word for the grackles than to 
say that, like the butcher-bird, they are chiefly 
instructive as showing what a bird ought not 
to be. And yet even a grackle can somewhat 
quicken the pulse in March. 
9 
No sooner does the snow disappear from a 
sunny and sheltered spot than a flush of green 
overspreads it, and the typical colors of winter 
and summer are now alternating, over all the 
fields and woods, in picturesque patchwork. 
Snow-birds are becoming numerous, and on the 
morning of the 16th appeared the first true mi- 
88 
