COWBIRD 247 



bobolink yesterday where Channing saw it the day be- 

 fore, in the midst of a large flock. I go by the place 

 this afternoon and see very large flocks of them, cer- 

 tainly several hundreds in all, and one has a little white 

 on his back, but I do not see the white one. Almost 

 every bush along this brook is now alive with these 

 birds. You wonder where they were all hatched, for 

 you may have failed to find a single nest. I know eight 

 or ten active boys who have been searching for these 

 nests the past season quite busily, and they have found 

 but two at most. Surely but a small fraction of these 

 birds will ever return from the South. Have they so 

 many foes there? Hawks must fare well at present. 

 They go off^ in a straggling flock, and it is a long time 

 before the last loiterer has left the bushes near you. 



July 15, 1860. I hear this forenoon the link link of 

 the first bobolink going over our garden, — though I 

 hear several full strains of bobolinks to-day, as in May, 

 carrying me back to Apple Sunday, but they have been 

 rare a long time. Now as it were the very cope of the 

 dark-glazed heavens yields a slightly metallic sound 

 when struck. 



COWBIRD ; cow BLACKBIRD ; COW TROOPIAL 



July 16, 1851. The red-wings and crow blackbirds 

 are heard chattering on the trees, and the cow troopials 

 are accompanying the cows in the pastures for the sake 

 of the insects they scare up. Oftentimes the thought- 

 less sportsman has lodged his charge of shot in the cow's 

 legs or body in his eagerness to obtain the birds. 



Sept. 4, 1853. In Potter's dry pasture I saw the 



