1 68 Birds of Buzzard's Roost 



these dauntless voyagers is the bobolink, fresh from despoiling 

 the Carolina rice fields, waxed fat from his gormandizing, and 

 so surcharged with energy that the 500 mile flight to South 

 America on the way to the waving pampas of southern Brazil 

 seems a small hardship. Indeed, many bobolinks appear to 

 scorn the Jamaica resting point and to compass in a single 

 flight the 700 miles from Cuba to South America. With the 

 bobolink is an incongruous company of traveling companions 

 a vireo, a king bird, and a nighthawk that summer in 

 Florida; the queer duck-will's- widow of the Gulf States; the 

 two New England cuckoos ; the trim Alice thrush from Que- 

 bec ; the cosmopolitan bank swallow from frozen Labrador, 

 and the black-poll warbler from far Alaska. But the bobo- 

 links so far outnumber the rest of the motley crew that the 

 passage across the Caribbean Sea from Cuba to South America 

 may with propriety be called the 'bobolink route.' Occasion- 

 ally the mellow-voiced wood thrush joins the assemblage, or 

 a green-gold tanager which will prepare in the winter home 

 its next summer livery of flaming scarlet. But the 'bobolink 

 route' as a whole is not popular with other birds, and the 

 many that traverse it are but a fraction of the thousands of 

 North American birds that spend the winter holiday in South 

 America." 



The nest of the Bobolink is hard to find. I have never 

 found but one of them ; yet I am sure I have been in the im- 

 mediate locality of several. It is built on the ground and 

 composed of dry grass, straw and weeds and is placed in a 

 slight depression of the ground. In it are found, 



"Six white eggs on a bed of hay, 

 Freckled with brown a pretty sight! 



Where the mother sits all day; 

 Robert is singing with all his might, 



Nice, good wife that never goes out, 

 Keeping house while I frolic about." 



In prose and poetry the writers have tried to describe 

 his song, but have wholly failed to accomplish it. And this 

 is so because his song is utterly indescribable there is no- 

 thing like it. Mr. Washington Irving in his graphic des- 

 cription of the bird aptly tells how it is done. He says, "He 



