WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



nuisance. This does not mean, however, that a 

 general war of extermination on grakles is ad- 

 visable it would be distinctly unwise. 



These birds winter in immense numbers in the 

 lower parts of Virginia, North and South Caro- 

 lina, and Georgia, sometimes forming one con- 

 gregated multitude of several hundred thousands. 

 On one occasion Wilson met, on the banks of the 

 Roanoke, on the 20th of January, one of these 

 prodigious armies of crow-blackbirds. They arose, 

 he states, from the surrounding fields with a noise 

 like thunder, and, descending on the length of the 

 road before him, they covered it and the. fences 

 completely with black ; when they again rose, and 

 after a few evolutions descended on the skirts of 

 the high-timbered woods, they produced a most 

 singular and striking effect. Whole trees, for a 

 considerable extent, from the top to the lowest 

 branches, seemed as if hung with mourning. Their 

 notes and screaming, he adds, seemed all the while 

 like the distant sounds of a great cataract, but in 

 a musical cadence. 



