BIRDS OF KANSAS 77 



known to molest the crops, confining their food ahnost en- 

 tirely to insects, or the seeds of valueless weeds, in the 

 consumption of which they confer benefit rather than 

 harm. At the south, they are accused of injuring the 

 young wheat as they pass northward in their spring mi- 

 grations, and of plundering the rice plantations on their 

 return. About the middje of August they appear in al- 

 most innumerable, flocks among the marshes of the Dela- 

 ware river. There they are known as the Reedbirds. 

 Two weeks later they begin to swarm among the rice plan- 

 tations of South Carolina. There they take the name of 

 Ricebirds. In October tlioy again pass on southward, and 

 make another halt among the West India Islands. There 

 they feed upon the seeds of the Guinea grass, upon which 

 they become exceedingly fat. In Jamaica they receive a 

 new appellation and are called Butterbirds. They are 

 everywhere sought after by sportsmen, and are shot in 

 immense numbers for the table of the epicure. More re- 

 cently it has been ascertained that these birds feed greed- 

 ily upon the larva of the destructive cotton worm, and in 

 so doing render an immense service to the cultivators of 

 Sea Island cotton." 



Their nests are placed in a depression on the ground, 

 in the grass, in the low bottom lands, composed of slen- 

 der, wire-like stems of grasses. Eggs four or five, .85x- 

 .63 ; ashy white, evenly specked with light drab to gray- 

 ish and reddish brown, and pale surface markings in the 

 shell; in form, oval. A set of four, taken Jime 2d, 

 1867, at Pewaukee, Wisconsin, from a nest on marshy 

 grounds, only measure: .78x.63, .80x.61, .80x.63, .85x- 

 .63. 



