The Birds’ Calendar 
devoured during their four months’ stay in the 
United States 16,200,000,000 noxious insects ! 
I quote from the same writer the following 
brief and interesting account of their winter life 
in the Southern States. ‘‘ Sometimes they ap- 
peared driving about like an enormous black 
cloud carried before the wind, varying its shape 
every moment. Sometimes suddenly rising 
from the fields around me with a noise like 
thunder; while the glittering of innumerable 
wings of the brightest vermilion, amid the black 
cloud they formed, produced on these occasions 
a very striking and splendid effect. Then de- 
scending like a torrent, and covering the branch- 
es of some detached grove, or clump of trees, 
the whole congregated multitude commenced 
one general concert or chorus, that I have 
plainly distinguished at the distance of more 
than two miles, and when listened to at the in- 
termediate space of a quarter of a mile, with a 
slight breeze of wind to swell and soften the 
flow of its cadences, was to me grand and even 
sublime. The whole season of winter, that with 
most birds is passed in struggling to sustain life 
in silent melancholy, is with the red-wings one 
continued carnival.’’ 
As a singez the red-winged blackbird has 
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