116 SINGING BIRDS. 
to May, leaving those countries again in numerous troops about 
the middle of November. Thus assembled from the North and 
West in increasing numbers, they wholly overrun, at times, the 
warmer maritime regions, where they assemble to pass the 
winter in the company of their well-known cousins the Red- 
winged Troopials or Blackbirds; for both, impelled by the 
same predatory appetite, and love of comfortable winter 
quarters, are often thus accidentally associated in the plun- 
dering and gleaning of the plantations. The amazing 
numbers in which the present species associate are almost 
incredible. Wilson relates that on the zoth of January, a few 
miles from the banks of the Roanoke in Virginia, he met with 
one of those prodigious armies of Blackbirds, which, as he ap- 
proached, rose from the surrounding fields with a noise like 
thunder, and descending on the stretch of road before him, 
covered it and the fences completely with black ; rising again, 
after a few evolutions, they descended on the skirt of a leafless 
wood, so thick as to give the whole forest, for a considerable 
extent, the appearance of being shrouded in mourning, the 
numbers amounting probably to many hundreds of thousands. 
Their notes and screams resembled the distant sound of a 
mighty cataract, but strangely attuned into a musical cadence, 
which rose and fell with the fluctuation of the breeze, like the 
magic harp of olus. 
Their depredations on the maize crop or Indian corn com- 
mence almost with the planting. The infant blades no sooner 
appear than they are hailed by the greedy Blackbird as the 
signal for a feast; and without hesitation, they descend on the 
fields, and regale themselves with the sweet and sprouted seed, 
rejecting and scattering the blades around as an evidence of 
their mischief and audacity. Again, about the beginning of 
August, while the grain is in the milky state, their attacks are 
renewed with the most destructive effect, as they now assemble 
as it were in clouds, and pillage the fields to such a degree 
that in some low and sheltered situations, in the vicinity of 
rivers, where they delight to roam, one fourth of the crop is 
devoured by these vexatious visitors. The gun, also, notwith- 
