114 THE CROW BLACKBIRD. 



brownish, or of a dirty white, specked, spotted, scratched and 

 blotched, sometimes thickly, sometimes sparingly, with light 

 brown, or black. It seldom raises more than one brood 

 here. 



As to this bird's destructiveness in the corn-field, every 

 one has heard and seen enough. Hence the merciless 

 slaughter which he meets, and the dangling of his dead 

 body in terrorem. But if we are not to " muzzle the ox that 

 treadeth out the corn," let us take heed, lest we grudge the 

 Blackbird his corn unfairly. Some of the late ornithologists, 

 however, affirm that this bird, a near relative to the Crow in 

 habit as well as in appearance, is given to sucking other 

 birds' eggs and eating their young. If this be generally 

 proven against him he will smell more gunpowder than ever 

 before. 



The Crow Blackbirds find their winter residence in the 

 Southern States. " Here," according to Wilson, " numerous 

 bodies, collecting together from all quarters of the interior 

 and northern districts, and darkening the air with their 

 numbers, sometimes form one congregated multitude of 

 many hundred thousands. A few miles from the banks of 

 the Roanoke, on the 20th of January, I met with one of 

 those prodigious armies of Grakles. They rose from the 

 surrounding fields with a noise like thunder, and, descend- 

 ing on the length of road before me, covered it and the 

 fences completely with black; and when they again rose, 

 and, after a few evolutions, descended on the skirts of the 

 high-timbered woods, at that time destitute of leaves, they 

 produced a most singular and striking effect; the whole 

 trees for a considerable extent, from the top to the lowest 

 branches, seemed as if hung in mourning; their notes and 

 screaming the meanwhile resembling the distant sound of a 

 great cataract, but in more musical cadence, swelling and 



