12 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 



their passage, as they fly in high files during the whole 

 day. 



" Now begin their devastations. They plunder every field, 

 but are shot in immense numbers. As they pass along the 

 sea-shores, and follow the muddy edges of the rivers, cover- 

 ed at that season with full-grown reeds, whose tops are bent 

 down with the weight of the ripe seeds, they alight amongst 

 them in countless multitudes, and afford abundant practice 

 to every gunner. 



"It is particularly towards sunset, and when the weather is 

 fine, that the sport of shooting Reed Birds is most profitable. 

 They have then fully satiated their appetite, and have col- 

 lected together for the purpose of roosting. At the discharge 

 of a gun, a flock sufficient to cover several acres rises en masse, 

 and performing various evolutions, densely packed, and re- 

 sembling a sultry cloud, passes over and near the sportsman, 

 when he lets fly, and finds occupation for some time in pick- 

 ing up the dozens which he has brought down at a single 

 shot. One would think that every gun in the country has 

 been put in requisition. Millions of these birds are destroy- 

 ed, and yet millions remain, for after all the havoc that has 

 been made among them in the Middle Districts, they follow 

 the coast, and reach the rice plantations of the Carolinas in 

 such astonishing numbers, that no one could conceive their 

 flocks to have been already thinned. Their flesh is extreme- 

 ly tender and juicy. The markets are amply supplied, and 

 the epicures have a glorious time of it." 



We have a charming counterpart of Eobert in the South 

 and West, among the Orioles. He is called the Orchard or 

 Parson Oriole, from the soberness of his garments ; but O ! 

 commend us to such Parsons as he the merry " clerk of 

 Copenhurst" would be demure beside him ! The gleeful, 

 thoughtless, sinner! he can't go from one tree-top to an- 

 other, (for he is more ambitious than Eob, and swings his 

 grass- wove hammock from pinnacle orchard boughs,) without 

 ranting in such a glad, rattle-pate, glorious fashion about his 



