128 THE BIRDS ABOUT Us. 



with its few peculiarly liquid notes. The female is a 

 nonentity in appearance, and would be in fact, were 

 it not that it is too lazy, too ignorant, or too awkward 

 to build itself a nest and look after it, but having an 

 egg to dispose of, drops it in the nest of some other 

 bird and thinks no more about it. It puts one a little 

 out of patience with evolution that any victim of the 

 cow-bird should be willing to accept the situation, 

 and not only hatch but rear the foundling. A single 

 year's protest would annihilate the species, and they 

 would never be missed. This is a little hard on 

 them, perhaps, but, seen at any time and under any 

 circumstances, they can hardly be considered as in- 

 teresting, unless it is in autumn when they congre- 

 gate in quite large flocks, and if the day be windy 

 they seem to be blown about like a windrow of dead 

 leaves. They are migratory after a fashion, coming 

 in March and sometimes quite early in the month, 

 and are often in the low meadows along the Dela- 

 ware River as late as the middle of November. In- 

 deed, Indian summer seems to be a favorite time 

 with them, and they have an amount of animation 

 then that seems unnatural, a sort of intoxication. 



In the Southwest this bird is replaced by the 

 " Bronzed Cow-bird," which seems a strange distinc- 

 tion, as our Eastern bird, in spring at least, is about 

 as " bronzy" as it well can be. 



In Western North America, in marshes, east, regu- 

 larly to Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, and Texas, we 

 have the Yellow-headed Blackbird. It is " acci- 

 dental" in Pennsylvania, and even gets as far away 

 from home as Massachusetts. 



