Notes on the Birds. 361 
oceurs as a migrant, but I have no definite data. In Vigo County, I saw 
several large flocks October 26, 1886, and still others in the spring of 1889 
along the old canal, north of Terre Haute. 
126. QUISCALUS QUISCULA 4NEUS Ridgway. BRONZED GRACKLE. (511b) 
An abundant summer resident, but much less common than it was 30 to 
50 years ago. 
In Monroe County, very abundant about Bloomington, nesting in the pine 
trees in the yards; a few doubtless remain all winter some years. 
Very common in Vigo County along the river, also nesting in the pine 
trees in Terre Haute. March 10 and 11, 1888, more than 100 seen. 
In Carroll County, very abundant. May 21, 1883, nests with large young 
in the Maple swamp. March 15, 1854, first of season seen at the Jacob 
Nettle farm southwest of Camden; very common a few days later. March 
25, 1885, saw several, the first of the season, soon became common. 
Thirty to 40 years ago this region was heavily wooded. A more magnifi- 
cent hardwood forest than that which covered the Wabash yalley, the world 
has never seen; great oaks of several species, splendid maples, ashes and 
elms, each of several species, stately black walnuts, yellow poplars and 
sycamores, beautiful beeches and buckeyes, and a score or more of other 
hardwood trees, with a dense underbrush of smaller trees, shrubs and 
vines, and yet under these, tangled thickets of spice-brush, button-bush, wild 
roses, briars, and other smaller growth of many kinds. And layishly dis- 
tributed through these umbrageous forests were hundreds of small ponds, 
many of them only a few yards or rods, and none more than half a mile in 
length or width. Many of them, indeed, were mere wet-weather ponds which 
dried up late in summer or early fall, while others were more permanent and 
held more or less water throughout the year. Besides these there were many 
swamps, large or small, which furnished excellent breeding and roosting 
grounds for vast numbers of crow blackbirds and red-shouldered blackbirds. 
The crow blackbirds made their nests in the trees and snags, placing them in 
the forks of the larger limbs, on the tops of snags, in decayed places in the 
trunks, and sometimes even in hollows in the trunks or larger limbs. The 
height of the nests above the ground varied from a few to many feet. I 
have seen a nest on the top of a stump not two feet above the water, and 
another fully 50 feet from the ground in the crotch of a swamp maple. 
In those days millions of crow blackbirds were hatched and grew to 
maturity in and about these swamps and ponds. Hundreds of thousands 
came up from the south every spring, built their nests and reared millions 
of young. It is not believed these figures are at all extravagant. The enor- 
mous numbers were never more noticeable than during roasting-ear time, 
when the green corn was in the milk, sweet and toothsome. Then the vast 
hosts, old and young, would make daily invasions of the cornfields, settling 
down on the ears as did the locusts on ancient Egypt, or as do their relatives, 
our grasshoppers, on the fields of Kansas. 
So great was the damage done to the corn that the farmers made every 
effort to drive the birds away. One of the duties of the farmers’ boys 
was to keep the blackbirds out of the cornfields, which the boys attempted 
to do by making all sorts of noises, such as shouting, calling, throwing 
