150 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 



to 40 lat. on the Atlantic coast and to 52 lat. in the interior. 

 Breeds from Pennsylvania, northwestern West Virginia, central 

 Ohio, central Indiana, northern Illinois, northern Missouri, 

 Nebraska and Utah northward. Migrates through West Indies, 

 Yukatan, Central America to South America as far as Paraguay, 

 southern Brazil, Bolivia, etc., also Galapagos and Bermudas. 



In Missouri the Bobolink is a fairly common transient visitant 

 throughout the state, except the heavily wooded parts, though 

 not an entire stranger even in the narrow valleys of the Ozarks. 

 In fact the numbers which pass through Missouri are much larger 

 than it would appear to those not initiated, because they are not 

 scattered broadcast over the territory, but migrate in small 

 flocks and visit only certain favorite meadows in which they 

 are easily overlooked when feeding silently on the ground. 

 The forerunners, usually males, appearing in the last week of 

 April, are sometimes kept back by adverse weather several 

 days, but the bulk of the species passes through when the weather 

 is not as changeable as earlier in the season, thus permitting 

 a rapid advance without long stop-overs. The largest flocks 

 are met with the second and third weeks of May; at first mostly 

 males are seen, then mixed flocks, and at last flocks in which 

 the females predominate. In some years all are gone soon after 

 the middle of May, in others not before the last of the month. 

 The noticing of their passage in autumn is still more a matter 

 of initiation than that of their spring migration. In spring there 

 are always moments when the whole or part of the flock fly 

 up from their breeding grounds, alight in a tree and give expres- 

 sion to their feelings by an outburst of music; or musically 

 inclined individuals pass by, going north, singing as they go. 

 In autumn music is heard only very exceptionally and just as 

 rarely do we see a male partly clothed in its summer dress; 

 the fashion at this time is the conventional traveling dress, in 

 which it easily passes for something else. It is the peculiar 

 "pink, pink" that betrays its presence when, high in air, it is 

 passing south, or changing from its feeding grounds in the fields 

 beyond the bluffs to the common roost in the grasses of the 

 marsh, where it spends the nights in company with different 

 kinds of Swallows and marsh loving members of the Blackbird 

 family. August 20 is about the time when the marshes of 

 northern Missouri see the Bobolinks flock in at night to roost, 

 and it takes the species a whole month to leave that part of the 

 country, the last date for St. Charles Co. being September 24. 



