234 



It would seem that it is entirely probable before man commenced his warfare 

 upon our forests and began to replace the trees with grass, the Bobolinks found 

 suitable breeding grounds about the lower end of Lake Michigan, reaching indefi- 

 nitely westward and possibly southward into Illinois. They extended over some 

 six or eight counties of northern Indiana to the vicinity of Rochester, Fulton 

 County, and a few of the southwestern counties of Michigan. From this center 

 they seem to have spread out in all directions. It is probable that along Lake 

 Erie, in Ohio, there were localities they also originally sought as summer homes, 

 and from there have spread over quite a large part of that State. The data at 

 hand is not sufficient to guide one very correctly in this regard. From southeast 

 Michigan, however, more observations are available, and would indicate that 

 even there the Bobolink is a recent advent. Whether or not they are of recent 

 introduction into the Saginaw Bay region the evidence does not say. 



Prof. W. W. (Dooke and Mr. Otto Widmann give it as a summer sojourner at 

 Jefferson Cisy, Mo. (Bull. No. 1, Kidgway Ornithological Club, December, 18S3, 

 p. 33). Dr. William C. Rives thinks it may breed in the Virginias (Cat. Birds of 

 the Virginias, Proc. Newport, N. H., Soc, October, 1890, p. 69). These locali- 

 ties are slightly farther south than those I have noted. With these exceptions 

 I have given the extreme southern points of their breeding range, and thev are the 

 fringing markers on the barriers of the breeding region. Capt. C. E. Bendire, in the 

 second volume of his valuable "Life Histories of North American Birds," has re- 

 corded the unusual fact that the Boljolink breeds, in April, in small numbers, on 

 Petite Anse Island, on the coast of Louisiana, and that it probably breeds rarely 

 in Florida (Special Bulletin V. S. National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, 

 1895, p. 433). 



The Bobolinks reappear on the southern border of the United States in April, 

 and for about a month are very destructive to the planted rice. Then they move 

 northward to their breeding grounds. This is true of the bulk. There are single 

 birds which often push on ahead of the crowd — some of them at a very early date. 

 April 4, 1890, I found a single male at Brookville, Ind. No others were seen 

 until May 17. Dr. P. L. Hatch says it arrived in the vicinity of Minneapolis, 

 Minn., April 5, 1870. (Notes on the Birds of Minnesota, First Rept. State Zoolo- 

 gist, Geol. and N. H. Surv., June, 1892, p. 271.) In 1885 it first reached Mount 

 Carmel, Mo., April 20. (U. S. Dept. Agriculture, Div. of Econotnic Ornithology, 

 Bull. No. 2, Report on Bird Migration in the Mississippi Valley in the years 1884 

 and 1885, by W. W. Cooke, 1888, p. 160.) In 1885, also, Mr. C. H. Bollman found 

 a single male at Bloomington, Ind., April 17. It was next seen there May 2. 



