3o8 Bird Studies. 



The female averages a little smaller than the male in size, and in sum- 

 mer is streaked above with dusky brown and black, rusty and buff. Below, 

 this streaking is much more definitely black and gray, or black and white. 

 The shoulders are generally obscurely tinged with deep crimson and the 

 throat with deep orange or warm buff. In the winter all of this coloring is 

 much suffused by rusty and buffy. 



The nests are placed in low bushes or reeds, and are built of coarse 

 grasses, weeds, and plant fibres, lined with a layer of fine soft grasses. The 

 eggs vary from three to five in number. They are pale bluish, streaked 

 and spotted and marked in zigzag lines with deep shades of brown. They 

 are nearly an inch long and almost seven tenths of an inch broad. 



These birds are distributed throughout Eastern North America to New 

 Brunswick and Manitoba. They breed, except in South Florida and the Gulf 

 Coast of Louisiana, throughout this area. They winter from Virginia 

 southward. 



The Red-winged Blackbirds which breed in the southern two thirds of 

 the peninsula of Florida and on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana are smaller 



and have more slender bills than their northern congeners. 

 Florida Red-wing. . . . . . . . . . . . . 



Ageiaius phoeniceus florida- he streaking ot black on the lower parts 01 the female is 



not so broad, and the red on the shoulders is generally 

 more noticeable. They are a local geographical, resident race of the Red- 

 winged Blackbird, grading into that species. The breeding and general hab- 

 its are very like those of the Red-wing. 



The Yellow-headed Blackbird is about ten inches and a half long. The 



male has the head, neck, and chest yellow, which varies in tone from crimson 



Yellow-headed to deep orange, sometimes being deep salmon pinkish. 



Blackbird. There is an area of pure white on the shoulders. The re- 



Xanthocephalus xantho- i / i i -111 TI r r 



cephaius (Bonap.). mamder ot the plumage is black. 1 he region in front of 

 the eye and the extreme upper throat is black or dusky. Old males in the 

 winter have the yellow, especially of the top of the head, more or less ob- 

 scured by the orange brown tips of each feather. The female is dusky 

 brown, and has the throat and chest obscurely yellow, the feathers on the 

 breast often being whitish. The female is somewhat smaller than the male. 

 Immature birds resemble the female, but are generally darker. 



