COWBIRD. • 81 



devoted mother. Both birds might have found comfortable shelter 

 in a spruce grove not twenty yards away. 



After the young are hatched Robert's manners become changed. 

 Gradually he lays aside his antics and his hilarity and busies him- 

 self with procuring food for the young, and later, in teaching them 

 to fly. Possibly the weighty care of a family may be the cause of 

 this gay fellow becoming so quiet in his manner, but it is more 

 probable that the exhausting moult which comes at that season is 

 responsible for the change. By the time the young are well on the 

 wing Robert of Lincoln has dropped the jester's capers and the 

 jester's motley, and appears in a suit of huffish brown, more or less 

 streaked with black, both parents and young at this season 

 wearing similar costumes. 



About the middle of August the bobolinks gather in large flocks, 

 and early in September they move southward to the southern rice 

 fields, where they obtain their southern name of rice birds. At that 

 season they become very fat and large numbers are killed for the 

 market. As midwinter approaches the flocks move farther south- 

 ward. 



In the spring the males, having assumed their nuptial plumage of 

 rich black, marked with buff and ashy white, journey northward 

 together, several days in advance of the flocks of females, and 

 the sexes do not mingle until they have settled in their summer 

 homes. I have seen separated flocks of males in New Brunswick 

 as late as the Queen's birthday. May 24th. 



COWBIRD. 



This species is peculiar in doing what no other American bird 

 does — it throws upon others the labor of hatching and rearing its 

 young. With most of our birds the rule obtains for the male to 

 select a female whom he induces to mate with him, and the pair 

 keep together during the year and are uniformly constant. Some 

 few species of more sedentary habits mate for a lifetime. In 

 most instances both the male and the female share in all the 

 domestic duties — in nest building, hatching the eggs, and caring for 



