BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
233 
Plate XL. 
QUISCALUS PURPUEEUS, (Bartram) Light. 
Purple Crackle. 
Not to be familiar with this species, which country folk usually club 
the Crow Blackbird, would argue an amount of ignorance and stupidity, 
hardly excusable. We doubt whether there is a single boy, who is old 
enough to exercise his observing faculties, that has not had his attention 
called to these creatures — their strange manoeuvres and shrill cries — as 
they cast their shadows across his path, or noisily perch high-up in the 
trees that shelter his father’s roof in the sweet springtime. Of course 
there are localities where these birds do not abound. But throughout the 
extended range of the species, it seems to be well known, and by some is 
nearly as severely persecuted as its very near cousin — the Common Crow 
— which it strongly resembles. It is a denizen of the eastern 2^^n’ts of 
North America, from the Gulf coast on the south to Labrador, Hudson’s 
Bay and the Saskatchewan. On the west, the Rockies intercept its prog- 
ress, and form an insuperable barrier. Various writers have accredited it 
to California, but the evidence rests on an insufficient basis. 
In the lower counties of Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas, immense 
armies of the birds, running up into the thousands, pass the winter. From 
these quarters they take uj) the line of flight when the weather warrants, 
and spread themselves over the country, reaching the Middle States about 
the fifteenth of March, the New England a fortnight later, and the North- 
west on or about the same time. So strongly are they attached to the old 
haunts that, when once arrived, they endure the greatest inconvenience of 
weather and hunger, rather than desert them. "We have known them to 
