FAMILY Icteridx. 



neat or starved to death by reason of the selfishness of 

 the loutish foster-brother. 



Red-winged A beautiful slim and smooth black bird 

 Blackbird with scarlet epaulets sways unsteadily on 



A gela his 



pha-niceu* fc " e 8U PP^ e stem of a cattail on the margin 

 L. 9.50 inches of the pond, and sends out a strange reed- 

 April ist hke note which, according to Thoreau's 

 way qf thinking, meant Conk-a-ree! This is the Red- 

 winged Blackbird, whose personality and coloring are 

 as strong as his song is peculiar. The bird is lustrous 

 black with the exception of the lesser wing coverts 

 (i. e., the shoulders) which are deep scarlet; this color 

 is bordered on the lower side by buff or a deep 

 cream tint. The female lacks the red color or it is 

 modified to a deep crimson tinge; the black is also 

 modified by the rusty margins to the feathers, and the 

 throat by a rusty orange tinge; under parts streaked 

 with gray or white. The nest is placed in a low bush 

 or among reeds, and is woven of coarse grasses, weeds, 

 and plant fibres, lined with finer material of the same 

 nature. Egg, pale blue, spotted and zigzag-streaked 

 with brown. The bird is common throughout the east- 

 ern part of the country. 



The Red-winged Blackbird is one of the easiest birds 

 to identify by his song, although that has the remark- 

 able quality of a mixed tone difficult to describe or to 

 place accurately on the musical staff. The song is made 

 up of three syllables, the first of which is obscure or dif- 

 ficult to catch unless one is not very far away from the 

 bird. Various writers interpret the syllables differently. 

 Emerson's opinion is that 



" The Redwing flutes his O ka lee.' " 



Mr. Chapman makes it "Kong-quer-ree"; William 

 Hamilton Gibson, "Gl-oogl-eee"; and yet another writer, 

 ' Gug-lug-geee." On two points all seem to agree, i. e., 

 the three syllables, and a repetition of the vowel e in the 

 last syllable. So it is an Apparently simple matter to 

 express the rhythm by signs, bearing in mind that the 



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