132 BIRDS 



southward by easy stages, they feed on the wild rice in the 

 marshes until, late in August, enormous flocks reach the 

 cultivated rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia. 



On the way, a great transformation has gradually taken 

 place in the male bobolink's dress. At the North he wore 

 a black, buflf, and white wedding garment, with the unique 

 distinction of being lighter above than below; but this he 

 has exchanged for a sparrowy winter suit like his mate's 

 and children's, only with a little more buflf about it. 



In this inconspicuous dress the reedbirds — or ricebirds, as 

 bobolinks are usually called south of Mason and Dixon's 

 line — descend in hordes upon the rice plantations when the 

 grain is in the milk, and do several millions of dollars' worth 

 of damage to the crop every year, sad, sad to tell. Of 

 com-se, the birds are snared, shot, poisoned. In Southern 

 markets a dozen of them on a skewer may be bought, 

 plucked and ready for the oven, for half a dollar. What a 

 tragic fate to overtake our joyous songsters! Birds that 

 have the misfortune to like anything planted by man, pay 

 a terribly heavy penalty. 



Such bobolinks as escape death, leave this country by 

 way of Florida and continue their four-thousand-mile 

 journey to southern Brazil, where they spend the winter; 

 yet, nothing daunted by the tragedies in the rice fields, 

 they dare return to us by the same route in May. By this 

 time the males have made another complete change of 

 feather to go a-courting. Most birds are content to 

 moult once a year, just after nursery duties have ended; 

 some, it is true, put on a partially new suit in the following 

 spring, retaining only their old wing and tail feathers; but 

 a very few, the bobolink, goldfinch, and scarlet tanager 

 among them, undergo as complete a change as Harlequin. 



