BIRDS OF FIELD AND GARDEN. 323 
The males chase each other madly, and swiftly pursue the 
females over the grass tops; or, sailing with down-bent 
wings, pour forth their torrent of music. The alarm note is 
a metallic chenk. When the young have been reared, the 
males begin to lose their striking dress, the song ceases, 
and early in August the Bobolinks are seen flying about 
in small flocks, uttering mellow , 
chinks, as they prepare for their 
southern journey. 
In May, June, and July insects 
form about eighty-five per cent. 
of the Bobolink’s food. The bird 
is very destructive to grasshop- 
pers and caterpillars, particularly to the army worm. It eats 
some parasitic Hymenoptera, and this may be looked upon 
as a bad habit; but otherwise little fault can be found with 
the Bobolink while it remains in the meadows of the north. 
In the south, however, the Bobolinks, together with the 
Blackbirds, cause an annual loss of fully two million dollars 
to the rice growers, and would destroy the whole crop were 
~ not all the hands on every plantation engaged during the 
“rice bird” season in shooting or frightening the birds. This 
continued shooting undoubtedly has had some effect on the 
number of birds breeding in the north, and Bobolinks are 
not now so generally common in Massachusetts as they were 
forty years ago. They have been reduced some by early 
mowing in the nesting fields, but their diminution from year 
to year is hardly perceptible. 
Fig. 145.— Bobolink, female. 
PIGEONS AND DOVES. 
This group of birds is now represented in Massachusetts 
by but one species, the Mourning Dove, as the Passenger 
Pigeon appears to have disappeared, and may now be ex- 
tinct. The Mourning Dove, which is often mistaken for it, 
is now protected by law at all times, and probably will be 
saved from the fate of the Pigeon. Presumably all the sup- 
posed “wild Pigeons” now reported by different observers 
in Massachusetts are Mourning Doves. 
