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THE BOAT-TAILED GRAKLE OR GREAT CROW 

 BLACKBIRD. 



QUISCALUS MAJOR, ViEILL. 

 PLATE CLXXXVII. Male and Female. 



This elegant bird is an inhabitant of the Southern States, to the ma- 

 ritime portions of which it is more particularly attached. Indeed, it sel- 

 dom goes farther inland than forty or fifty miles, and even then follows 

 the swampy margins of large rivers, as the Mississippi, the Santee, the St 

 John's, and the Savannah. It is found in Lower Louisiana, but never 

 ascends so far as the city of Natchez, and it abounds in the south-eastern 

 low grounds of the Floridas, and in those of Georgia and South Carolina, 

 as well as in the sea islands of the Atlantic coasts, as far north as Carolina, 

 beyond which none are to be seen. 



The Boat-tailed Grakles are gregarious at all seasons of the year, and 

 frequently assemble in very large flocks, which, however, cannot be com- 

 pared with those of the Purple Grakle, or of the Red-winged Starling. 

 They seek for their food amid the large salt marshes, and along their 

 muddy shores, and throw themselves into the rice plantations as soon as 

 the grain is fit for being eaten by them. In autumn they resort not un- 

 frequently to corn fields, and the ploughed lands of the plantations, inter- 

 spersed with ponds or marshy places, retiring towards evening to the salt 

 marshes, where they roost in immense flocks amid the tall marsh grass 

 {Spartina glabra), from which their cries are heard until darkness comes 

 on. 



The food of this species consists principally of those small crabs called 

 " fiddlers," of which millions are found along the margins of the rivers 

 and mud-flats, as well as of large insects of all kinds, ground-worms, and 

 seeds, especially grain. They frequently seize on shrimps, and other 

 aquatic animals of a similar nature, that have been detained at low water 

 on the banks of racoon oysters, a kind of shell-fish so named under the 

 idea that they are eaten by that quadruped. In autumn, while the rice is 

 yet in the stack, they commit considerable mischief by feeding on the 

 graiuj although not so much as when it is in a juicy state, when the 

 planters are obliged to employ persons to chase them from the fields. 



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