12 FOOD OF BOBOLINK, BLACKBIRDS, AND GRACKLES. 
good toeat. In the North it does much good and practically no harm; 
in the South it becomes a veritable pest. Toa person born and reared 
in New England and taught to regard this bird somewhat as the Hol- 
landers regard the stork,.it is an unwelcome duty to pronounce upon 
it a verdict of condemnation, but the facts force the belief that until 
some practical method shall be devised to prevent its ravages upon 
the rice crop there can be no other conclusion than that the good done 
by the bobolink does not in any appreciable measure counterbalance 
the harm. 
THE BOBOLINK. 
(Dolichonyx oryzivorus.) 
Within the memory of many persons who have passed the half- 
century mark most of the literature of the bird world available to 
Americans was that imported from Europe, and stories of the skylark 
Fic. 1.—Bobolink. 
and of the little robin-redbreast were the amusement of their simple 
childhood. They often wondered why they never saw these birds. 
But when American writers fully awoke to the beauty and attract- 
lveness of their native birds, tales, both in verse and prose, of birds 
to be seen cvery day in our own fields and forests began to find their 
way into the household. Among these familiar little friends one of 
the first to be enshrined in song and story was the bobolink. 
