232 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



with measured wing strokes, a scattered company would come over the 

 hill at an elevation of from 50 to 100 feet and make directly for the marsh, 

 alighting on the alders and sedges as if they were perfectly at home. 

 Evidently these birds migrate by day, as I have seen them come into the 

 marshes many times in this manner, making their first appearance late in 

 the afternoon. 



The habitat of the Redwing in nesting time is almost without exception 

 in flooded land where sedges, cat-tails and bushes rise from very wet soil or 

 from the water, preferably where the water is from i to 3 feet deep. The 

 nests are attached on all sides to the cat-tails, sedge grass or the bushes 

 in which they are constructed, and are usually placed only a few inches 

 above the water, but sometimes at a height of 3 or 4 feet. They are made 

 entirely of grass and sedges woven into a compact structure with the live 

 grass intertwined between the outer and coarser portions of the nesting 

 material. The inner portion is lined with fine rushes, grasses and sedges. 

 The eggs are from 4 to 6 in number, usually 5, of a pale bluish or greenish 

 white with pen lines of blackish and dark brown and claret brown some- 

 times arranged in a wreath near the large end, on others irregularly and 

 thinly scattered over the surface. The average dimensions are 1.05 by 

 .72 inches. 



This species is more or less injurious to the grain fields, especially 

 corn, when it is in the milk. I have seen hundreds of acres of corn land 

 in the vicinity of extensive marshes which had been seriously injured by 

 the attacks of these birds. In the early days of the country the Redwing 

 was called the maize thief from his depredations upon the cornfield, but 

 now when the cornfields are so numerous and the marshes of such com- 

 paratively slight extent and, consequently, the redwings are so few in 

 number, the damage they do is so small as scarcely to be noticeable except 

 in a few instances. At other times of the year they are a beneficial species, 

 feeding upon weed seeds, cutworms, grasshoppers and all kinds of insects. 

 Scores of stomachs which I have examined in August, September and October 

 were filled with grasshoppers. About 70 per cent of the food in autumn 

 was weed seeds, occasionally mixed with grasshoppers and cutworms. 



