1898.] ESSAYS. 47 



The Bobolink of the North visits us in the sunniier. The 

 female is a brown bird and the male is of the same color in the 

 winter, so that the people of the South call them the Rice birds. 

 As the females are in great excess of the males the southern 

 people think it is perfectly right to eat so many of them. The 

 Bobolink changes his plumage as he comes north in the si)ring, 

 and is a very different bird in appearance from the Reed bird of 

 the west and the Rice bird of the South that is so troublesome in 

 the colonies. Here where it nests it is really very valuable and 

 does a great deal of good work eating the insects that are found 

 on the ground and in the trees. He is certainly valual)le here 

 for his fine song. Thoreau says, "As he flies over the meadow 

 it is all bespattered with melody." He sings finely. A song on 

 the wing is fiir more wonderful than one in the top of a tree. 



The Bobolink begins the Blackbird family, and the Meadow 

 Lark is also a Blackbird, though its color does not suggest that, 

 but the bill and other points have proved it to be a Blackbird. 

 It is a brown bird, a terrestrial bird, having strong feet for walk- 

 ing over the grassy fields. The Meadow Lark is perhaps a 

 good name because he is distinctly a meadow bird, although it 

 is found as much on the hills especially where there are strips of 

 grassy fields as on Newton Hill. It builds its nest in the grass, 

 often making a little arched covered way to approach it. The 

 Meadow Lark is one of the most valuable of the birds in the 

 food it eats. He has been accused of eating clover seed, but 

 ninety-nine per cent, of the food taken in clover time is found 

 to be mainly of grasshoppers. It is estimated that the value of 

 the grass crop, saved by the Meadow larks, on a township of 

 thirty-six square miles, each month during the grasshopper sea- 

 son is about $24.00. It also eats May beetles, ants, bugs, cater- 

 pillars, curculios and leaf beetles. So we see that far from 

 being injurious in any way, it is one of the most useful allies to 

 agriculture, standing almost without a peer as a destroyer of 

 noxious insects. The bird comes very early in March, and it is 

 quite easy to be seen then although the color does harmonize 

 so well with the background that at first it is quite diflScult to 

 find the bird, but when you have once heard one singing it is 



