BIRDS OF FIELD AND GARDEN. 323 



The males chase each other madly, and swiftly pursue the 

 females over the grass tops ; or, sailing with down-bent 

 wings, pour forth their torrent of music. The alarm note is 

 a metallic chenk-. When the young have been reared, the 

 males begin to lose their striking dress, the song ceases, 

 and early in August the Bobolinks are seen flying about 

 in small flocks, uttering mellow 

 chinks, as they prepare for their 

 southern journey. 



In May, June, and July insects 

 form about eighty-five per cent, 

 of the Bobolink's food. The bird 

 is very destructive to grasshop- Fig. 145. - Bobolink, female, 

 pers and caterpillars, particularly to the army Avorm. It cats 

 some parasitic Hymenoptera, and this may be looked upon 

 as a bad habit ; but otherwise little fault can be found with 

 the Bobolink while it remains in the meadows of the north. 



In the south, however, the Bobolinks, together with the 

 Blackbirds, cause an annual loss of fully two million dollars 

 to the rice growers, and would destroy the whole crop were 

 not all the hands on every plantation engaged during the 

 "rice bird " season in shooting or frightening the birds. This 



o c o 



continued shooting undoubtedly has had some effect on the 

 number of birds breeding in the north, and Bobolinks are 

 not IIOAV so generally common in Massachusetts as they were 

 forty years ago. They have been reduced some by early 

 mowing in the nesting fields, but their diminution from year 

 to year is hardly perceptible. 



PIGEONS AND DOVES. 



This group of birds is now represented in Massachusetts 

 by but one species, the Mourning Dove, as the Passenger 

 Pigeon appears to have disappeared, and may now be ex- 

 tinct. The Mourning Dove, which is often mistaken for it, 

 is now protected by law at all times, and probably will be 

 saved from the fate of the Pigeon. Presumably all the sup- 

 posed "wild Pigeons" now reported by different observers 

 in Massachusetts are Mourning Doves. 



