The Birds and Poets 133 



flight and song. During the mating and nesting 

 season he is one of the most hilariously joyful of 

 our summer residents. His bubbling song is so 

 overflowing with rapture that his trembling flight 

 over the clover tops seems the natural result of 

 his intense emotions. When no longer able to con- 

 tain himself, he drops down upon a clover stem or 

 tuft of grass and finishes his song on a more stable 

 footing than the thin air, which seems to be an 

 insufficient support for a bird possessed of such 

 delirious ecstasy. 



It is very unfortunate that so fine a bird with 

 so infectious a song should unwisely select rice 

 as a favorite article of food, when there are so 

 many weed seeds which ought to be quite as 

 attractive a diet. By the first of September most 

 of the bobolinks have gone to the southern rice 

 fields. It is estimated by the Department of Agri- 

 culture that they annually destroy ten per cent of 

 the rice crop, and hence they are unfortunately 

 and with some reason considered the natural 

 enemies of the farmers, and large numbers of 

 "rice birds" are destroyed every autumn by 

 hunters. 



In the case of the bobolink, however, Nature 

 again takes care of her own, for with all the 

 slaughter of the birds on their southward journey, 

 they are such successful home builders that there 

 seems to be no appreciable diminution in their 

 numbers from year to year, although they are now 

 less plentiful in some sections of New England. 



