The Blackbird Family 



341 





A bobolink will sing while 

 perched on the top of a tall weed 

 or while flying. He seems to 

 carry two parts in his song, so 

 that you would think the music 

 he makes must come from more 

 than one bird. It is worth going 

 to the fields to hear. May and 

 June are the months to see and 

 hear bobolinks at their best. In 

 late summer both sexes are col- 

 ored like the females in spring. 

 They are then known as " reed- 

 birds." They migrate in flocks 

 by day and night, subsisting 

 mainly on wild rice that grows 

 in the marshes along the Atlantic 

 coast. " Formerly, when the low 

 marshy shores of the Carolinas 

 and some of the more southern 

 states were devoted to rice cul- 

 ture, the bobolinks made great havoc both upon the 

 sprouting rice in spring and upon the ripening grain 

 on their return migration in fall. With a change in 

 the rice-raising districts, however, this damage is no 

 longer done." 



Bobolinks spend the winter south of the equator, but 

 in summer are common in the meadows in Canada and 

 in most of the Northern states. Why do they not 

 arrive early at their Northern home? (See page 305.) 



While in the North they eat a little grain, but they 



William Hoot 

 Male bobolink 



FIG. 212. 



on mullein stalk. 



