Cyanocephalus the Obscure 



(BREWER BLACKBIRD.) 



By P. B. Peabody 



SCANT praise for sturdy pioneering is the pulveric palm reluctantly held- 

 out to such work as The Warbler has been doing, without unneces- 

 sary fuss, of late years. Whether it be in the elucidation of moments in the 

 biologia of some rarest-of-rare North American Birds or in laborious, unre- 

 warded amassing of new and most-important facts germaine to the life of 

 over-looked yet greatly-interesting species, such work, wrought in the true 

 altruistic spirit, can only await the appreciation of accumulated generations 

 of awakened sensibility. To the latter class would be referred the follow- 

 ing symposium of many notes from widely divergent breeding areas ; con- 

 cerning a bird which everybody in the mid- West observes, regularly, twice 

 each year ; without being in the least conscious of the real character of the 

 bird he is observing. Proud of our acumen, -avert t we ? 



Masses of Blackbirds throng all parts of the Middle States, in spring 

 and autumn. Along the Mississippi Valley, and westward, the Bronzed 

 Grackle, the Common Red-wing, the Thick-billed Red-wing,, the Rusty 

 Grackle and the Brewer Blackbird each furnish their contingent to these 



teeming cohorts. The amateur bird-lover knows a Red-wing, — usually 



but, who knows the Brewer Blackbird? Verily, he that will take the pains 

 to scrutinize the " cyanocephalous, , ' — the blue-headed, — character of the 

 bird he sees ; to mark the drabby plumage of the females ; and to hear the 

 thin, weak, wiry "tip" of the bird's ordinary call. Isn't that easy? — Well,- 

 it is essential ! 



Along the Red-River- Valley of-the-North we learn, speedily, to look in 

 right places for the nestings of the Brewer Blackbird. There are two forms 

 of location, perfectly differentiated the one from the other, favored by this 

 very-particular gregarian. The one of these will lie on the wet, willowy, 

 prairie reaches ; the other, along the burr-oak and hazel hill-sides that border 

 the winding streams which pierce the nearly-level water-sheds of that great, 

 broad valley. A seemingly curious and contradictory condition seems to be 

 indispensably involved, as a requisite to the use of willowy meadows as breed- 

 ing places by the Brewer Blackbird. To be available they mnst have been 



