TO THE BIRDS OF NEW JERSEY. 



entire body plumage metallic bronze except the head, 

 neck and forebreast, which are blue or purple. The fe- 

 male Grackle is much duller than the male. The young 

 during their first summer have scarcely a trace of metallic 

 coloring, being uniform dull black. 



The nest is built about thirty feet up a tree, although 

 also sometimes found in a bush or in a hole in a tree. It 

 is bulky but very compactly built of coarse grasses, lined 

 with finer grasses. The eggs are from three to six in 

 number, one and one-fifth by four-fifths of an inch in 

 size, very variable, but generally a pale blue or a blue 

 green, with brown and black scrawls; different sets in the 

 same colony are frequently very unlike. 



The birds breed on the Atlantic slope, generally in col- 

 onies, from Georgia to Massachusetts. The winter is 

 spent in the south, very few remaining here after the first 

 of November; they arrive here early in March. 



Their cry is a wheezy squeak and their call a rasping 

 chirp. 



These birds do a great deal of mischief in cornfields, but 

 partly make up for the injury they do by destroying rose 

 bugs, curculio, May beetles, grasshoppers, crickets and 

 locusts. 



Grebe, MIolboeWs.This is the largest of the Grebes 

 and is very seldom seen in New Jersey, occurring occa- 

 sionally during migrations. It is nineteen inches in 

 length; bill, two inches; the upper parts are of a dull 

 black and the under of a silvery white, generally with 

 more or less rusty red on the neck, except in young birds. 

 Grebes nest among the rushes and reeds, and the nest, 

 composed of a mass of decayed vegetation, is frequently 

 seen floating in the water. 



Grebe, Horned. Length, thirteen inches; bill, three- 

 quarters of an inch; above, glossy black, tinged with gray; 

 head with tufts of feathers which project on each side 



