FIRST-COMERS. 55 



by the spring rains. Their destruction of insects especial- 

 ly during May, when their young are in the nest is enor- 

 mous; yet their forays upon the cornfields, I fear, overbal- 

 ance the good done the fanner by putting an end to grubs 

 noxious to his crops. 



" The depredations committed by these birds are almost 

 wholly on Indian-corn at different stages. As soon as its 

 blades appear above the ground after it has been planted, 

 the grakles descend upon the fields, pull up the tender plant 

 and devour the seeds, scattering the green blades around. 

 It is of little use to attempt to drive them away with a gun: 

 they only fly from one part of the field to another. And 

 again, as soon as the tender corn has formed, these flocks, 

 now. replenished by the young of the year, once more 

 ssvarin in the cornfields, tear off the husks, and devour the 

 tender grains." Wilson saw fields in which more than half 

 the corn was thus ruined. 



These birds winter in immense numbers in the lower 

 parts of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, 

 sometimes forming one congregated multitude of several 

 hundred thousand. On one occasion Wilson met, on the 

 banks of the Eoanoke, on the 20th of January, one of these 

 prodigious armies of crow blackbirds. They arose, he states, 

 from the surrounding fields with a noise like thunder, and, 



