THE COW BLACKBIRD. 339 



sustenance from fields and meadows, gleaning seeds of 

 grasses and weeds, and capturing orthopterous and other 

 insects, they make sad havoc in the fields of late grain and 

 rice ; and the firing of guns during their passage through 

 the Middle and Southern States, not only by farmers' and 

 planters' boys, but by sportsmen and pot-hunters, who 

 shoot them for the table and market, is often almost inces- 

 sant. 



MOLOTHRUS, SWAINSON. 



Mokthrus, SWAINSON, F. Bor. Am., II. (1831) 277. (Type Fringilla pecoris, Gm.) 

 Bill short, stout, about two-thirds the length of head; the commissure straight; 

 culmen and gonys slightly curved, convex, the former broad, rounded, convex, and 

 running back on the head in a point; lateral toes nearly equal, reaching the base of 

 the middle one, which is shorter than the tarsus; claws rather small; tail nearly 

 even; wings long, pointed, the first quill longest. 



MOLOTHRUS PECOEIS. Swainson. 

 The Cow Blackbird; Cowbird. 



Fringilla pecoris, Gmelin. Syst. Nat., I. (1788) 910. 

 Emberiza pecoris, Wilson. Am. Orn., II. (1810) 145. 



Icterus pecoris, Bonaparte. Obs. Wils. (1824), No. 88. Aud. Orn. Biog., I. (1831) 

 493; V. (1839) 233, 490. 



Icterus (emberizoides) pecoru, Nuttall. Man., I. (1832) 178 ; 2d ed., 190. 

 Fringilla ambiyua, Nuttall. Man. I. (1832) 484. (Young.) 



DESCRIPTION. 



Second quill longest; first scarcely shorter; tail nearly even, or very slightly 

 rounded; male with the head, neck, and anterior half of the breast, light chocolate- 

 brown, rather lighter above; rest of body lustrous-black, with a violet-purple gloss, 

 next to the brown, of steel-blue on the back, and of green elsewhere. Female, light 

 olivaceous-brown all over, lighter on the head and beneath ; bill and feet black. 



The young bird of the year is brown above, brownish- white beneath; the throat 

 immaculate; a maxillary stripe and obscure streaks thickly crowded across the 

 whole breast and sides ; there is a faint indication of a pale superciliary stripe ; 

 the feathers of the upper parts are all margined with paler ; there 1 are also indications 

 of the light bands on the wings ^ these markings are all obscure, but perfectly appre- 

 ciable, and their existence in adult birds may be considered as embryonic, and show- 

 ing an inferiority in degree to the species with the under parts perfectly plain. 



Length, eight inches; wing, four and forty-two one-hundredths inches; tail, three 

 and forty one-hundredths inches. 



Hob. United States from the Atlantic to California: not found immediately on 

 the coast of the Pacific. 



