234 The Bobolink 
brings them into the region of the rice, where, at the 
expense of the planter, they recuperate very rapidly. 
If the arrival of the birds was but a few weeks earlier 
or a few weeks later, the rice would escape uninjured. 
During the southern migration opposite conditions 
prevail, although with similar results to the rice grower; 
the birds now take the land migration first, stopping 
in the Southern States to recruit their exhausted 
energies, caused by the rearing of the brood and by the 
long flight. This stop-over period in the South comes 
at the season of the rice harvest, furnishing the birds 
with an easy food supply—far easier than it would be 
to get it from the uncultivated fields—and this, 
coupled with the fact that the rice fields are limited 
in area, causes an individual loss to rice growers that 
would not be felt to the same extent if the crop were 
a general one, such as the oat or wheat crop. 
That birds do not go much out of their old routes for 
food is well illustrated in the case of Texas. It is fast 
becoming a rice growing state, but as it is a little to 
one side of the path of the bobolinks that migrate 
through the Mississippi valley, the rice fields are not 
very seriously damaged. 
We can easily see that to the southern rice grower 
the beauty of the bobolink, the sweet melody of its 
song, Bryant’s poem—‘“Robert of Lincoln”—or the 
