34 SOME CANADIAN BIRDS. 



RED- WINGED BLACKBIRD. 



This species is exceedingly abundant, and breeds throughout the 

 country north to about the fiftieth parallel. Yet while so abundant 

 and so widely distributed the bird is not as well known as these 

 facts might suggest, because of itfi habit of gathering in numbers at 

 some favorite nesting ground to the exclusion of adjacent places 

 apparently as suitable. So while locally abundant it may be seen 

 never or seldom in many districts. The favored haunts of the 

 red-wings during the summer months are the marshes and swampy 

 meadows where the herbage is rank and cat-tails flourish. 

 Here the birds gather when nesting time arrives. In the 

 more southern localities the nests are begun early in May, though 

 the birds usually enter the country much earlier — the males 

 preceding the females. After the broods become independent of 

 parental care, tho red-wings gather in immense flocks and scour the 

 country. I have seen such flocks on the Grand Lake meadows, in 

 New Brunswick, when they appeared like clouds and must have 

 numbered thousands. Soon after these flocks are formed — in 

 September or October, according to latitude — the birds move 

 southward and gradually migrate to their winter resorts, which 

 extend from tha Southern States to Costa Rica. A few examples 

 have been found in New England during the winter months — 

 notably in the marshes near Cambridge. 



The nests of this species that I have seen have been tied between 

 several stalks of rushes or fastened to a low alder, but nests have 

 been placed amid a tussock of rank grass, and on a branch as high as 

 twenty feet from the ground. The exterior of the nest is formed 

 of long leaves of sedge-grass and other similar coarse but flexibie ma- 

 terial, clumsily interlaced with roots and twigs. The whole is cemented 

 with fibrous peat and when dry the structure is firm, and strong, 

 but bulky and inartistic. The inside of this roughly formed cup 

 is lined with fine grass rather neatly arranged, and upon this the 

 female deposits her beautiful eggs — three to five in number. The 

 ground color of the eggs varies from bluish white to greenish blue, 

 and is fantastically marked with dark brown and a few spots or 

 lines of dull lilac. 



