250 LAND-BIRDS AND GAME BIRDS 



are very faintly blue, with a few scrawls and often blotches 

 (chiefly at the larger end) of dark brown, black, and rarely 

 lilac. 



(c). The Red-winged Blackbirds pass the winter in many of 

 the Southern States. Wilson, in recording his observations 

 there, says : " Sometimes they appeared driving about like an, 

 enormous black cloud carried before the wind, varying its 

 shape every moment. Sometimes suddenly rising from the 

 fields around me with a noise like thunder ; while the glittering 

 of innumerable wings of the brightest vermilion amid the black 

 cloud they formed, produced on these occasions a very striking 

 and splendid effect. Then descending like a torrent, and cov- 

 ering the branches of some detached grove, or clump of trees, 

 the whole congregated multitude commenced one general con- 

 cert or chorus, that I have plainly distinguished at the distance 

 of more than two miles, and when listened to at the interme- 

 diate space of about a quarter of a mile, with a slight breeze 

 of wind to swell and soften the flow of its cadences, was to me 

 grand and even sublime. The whole season of winter that 

 with most birds is passed in struggling to sustain life, in silent 

 melancholy, is with the Red-wings one continued carnival. 

 The profuse gleanings of the old rice, corn, and buckwheat 

 fields, supply them with abundant food ; at once, ready and 

 nutritious ; and the intermediate time is spent either in aerial 

 manoeuvres, or in grand vocal performances, as if solicitous to 

 supply the absence of all the tuneful summer tribes, and to 

 cheer the dejected face of nature with their whole combined 

 powers of harmony." Though Wilson does not deny the great 

 injuries which these birds do to crops, where agriculture is 

 extensively carried on, yet he estimates at the time of his 

 writing that they ate, in four months spent in the United 

 States, 16,200,000,000 noxious insects ! 



The Swamp Blackbirds are to be found in summer so far to 

 the northwardas the 57th parallel of latitude, though in many 

 parts of northern New England altogether absent. They are 

 sometimes the first birds to visit us in spring, though generally 

 preceded by the Blue Birds. They are said to have reached 



