134 BOBOLINK, 
bands or colonies. They generally select a pine grove, 
often choosing one in a cemetery, park, or other locality 
where they will not be disturbed. This may result in a 
scarcity of food when the young are born, but, rather 
than abandon a locality which experience has proved to 
be safe, they make long journeys in search of food for 
their nestlings. By watching the old birds one may then 
easily learn where they live. Their flight is direct and 
somewhat labored, and when going only a short distance 
they “keel” their tail-feathers, folding them upward 
from the middle, an action which renders Grackles con- 
spicuous and easily identifiable when on the wing. On the 
ground they strut about with a peculiar walk, which, in 
connection with their yellowish white eye, adds to the 
singularity of their appearance. 
The Grackle’s nest is a bulky, compact structure of 
mud and grasses. It is usually placed in trees, twenty to 
thirty feet from the ground, but the bird may sometimes 
nest in bushes or even in a Woodpecker’s deserted hole. 
The three to six eggs are generally pale bluish green, 
strikingly spotted, blotched, or scrawled with brown and 
black. But one brood is raised, and when the young 
leave the nest they roam about the country in small 
bands, which later join together, forming the enormous 
flocks of these birds we see in the fall. 
The Bobolink’s extended journeys and quite differ- 
ent costumes have given him many aliases. Throughout 
his breeding range, from New Jersey to Nova Scotia, 
Bobolink, and westward to Utah, he is known 
Dolichonyz while nesting as the Bobolink. In 
oryzivorus. July and August he loses his black, 
Plate XXXVI tuff, and white wedding dress, and 
gains a new suit of feathers resembling in color those 
worn by his mate, though somewhat yellower. This is 
the Reedbird dress, and in it he journeys nearly four 
