224 NORTH AMKUICAN BIRDS. 



planters. In tlie early season they seek their food among the large salt 

 marshes of tlie seaboard, and along the muddy banks of ereeks and rivers. 

 They do great damage to the rice plantations, l)Oth when the grain is in the 

 si>ft state and afterwiu'ds when tlie ripened grain is stacked. They also feed 

 very largely upon the small crabs called tiddlers, so common in all the mud 

 flats, earlh\\(»rnis, various insects, shrimi)S, and other aipiatic forms of the 

 bke character. 



A few of these birds are resident throughout the year, though the 

 greater i)art retire farther south during a portion of the winter. They 

 return in February, in full ]>lumage, when they mate. They resort, by pairs 

 and in com})anies, to certain favorite breeding-places, where they ln;gin to 

 construct their nests. They do not, however, even in Florida, l»egin to breetl 

 before Ai)ril. They build a large and clumsy nest, made of very coarse 

 and miscellaneous materials, chiefly sticks and fragments of diy weeds, 

 sedges, and strips of bark, lined with finer stems, fibrous roots, and grasses, 

 and have from three to five eggs. 



It is a very singular but well-established characteristic of this species, 

 that no sooner is their nest completed and incubation commencetl than the 

 male birds all desert their mates, and, joining one another in fiocks, keep 

 ajtart from the females, feeding by themselves, until they are joined l)^' the 

 young birds and their mothers in the fall. 



These facts and this trait of character in this s])ecies have been fully con- 

 firmed by the observations of J)t. i^iachman of Charleston. In 1832 he 

 visited a breeding-localitv of these birds. On a single Smilax bush he found 

 more than thirty nests of the Grakles, from three to five feet apart, some 

 of them not more than fifteen inches above the water, and only females were 

 seen about the nests, no males making their appearance. Dr. Bachman also 

 visited colonies of these nests placed upon live-oak trees thirty or forty feet 

 fr(un the ground, and carefully watched the manners of the ohl birds, but 

 has never found any males in the vicinitv of their nests after the e«>'y;s had 

 been laid. They always keep at a distance, feeding in flocks in the marshes, 

 leaving the females to take charge of their nests and young. They have but 

 one broo<I in a season. 



As these birds fly, in loose flocks, they continually utter a peculiar cry, 

 which ]\Ir. Audubon states resembles or maybe represented hy kiyrick, crick; 

 crick. Their usual notes are harsh, resembling loud, shrill whistles, and are 

 frecpiently accompanied with their ordinary cry of crick-criclc-crcc. In the 

 love-season these notes are said to l)e more pleading, and are changed into 

 sounds wdiich Audubon states resemble tirit, tirit, titiri-titiri-titiree, rising 

 from low to high with great regularity and emphasis. The cry of the young 

 bird, when just able to fly, he compares to the whistling cry of some kind 

 of frogs. 



The males are charged by Mr. Audubon with attacking birds of other 

 species, driving them from their nests and sucking their eggs. 



