THE BOBOLINK. 18 
The peculiar difference in the plumage of the two sexes and the 
idiosyncrasies of the song of the male have long rendered the bobo- 
link a marked bird in its summer home in the Northern States. Few 
species show such striking contrasts in the color of the sexes, and few 
have songs more unique and whimsical. Even the early settlers 
recognized the grotesqueness of some of its notes in their imitative 
name of ‘conquiddle.’ In the South it is universally known as the 
‘ricebird,’ from its habit of preying upon rice, while in the Middle 
States during its southward migration it is called ‘ reedbird.’ 
The breeding range of the bobolink is confined to the Transition 
and Carolinian zones. It occupies the northern part of the United 
States and the southern part of the British Provinces, extending from 
the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, and locally beyond to eastern 
Idaho and eastern Nevada (see frontispiece). In winter the bird retires 
beyond our southern border, ranging southward as far as Brazil. In 
the last half of April it enters the United States just as the rice is 
sprouting in Southern rice fields, and at once begins to pull up and 
feed upon the sprouted kernels. Its stay is short, for this is the 
season of reproduction, and it hastens northward to enter upon that 
function. 
The nesting usually takes place in a meadow or mowing field, not far 
from a running brook or spring, and the young are generally upon 
the wing in the latter part of July. Up to this time they have been 
fed upon insects, but now the whole family, clad in plain clothes (for 
~ the male has lost his bright spring garb), betake themselves to swamps 
for wild rice, to weed patches for seed, or sometimes to grainfields for 
oats; but all the time they move slowly toward the South. The small 
flocks unite; all those that breed in the northeastern part of the coun- 
try concentrate along the marshes and inlets of the ‘seashore, and the 
whole body, constantly growing by accessions from other parts of the 
range, moves steadily southward toward the rice fields—an army vaster 
than that of Xerxes. The birds begin to arrive upon the rice fields 
about August 20, and from that time until the last of them wing their 
way to their winter home, nearly two months later, there is no rest for 
the unfortunate rice grower. They swarm upon the fields by millions, 
and when frightened off at one place at once settle upon another a 
short distance away. 
In some of the previous publications on the bobolink the havoc 
the bird causes among the rice fields of the South does not appear. 
Audubon mentions its injury to cornfields in Virginia, Maryland, 
and Pennsylvania, and states that its food consists of grubs, cater- 
pillars, beetles, grasshoppers, crickets, and ground spiders, and the 
seeds of wild oats (Zizania aquatica ?), wheat, barley, rice, and other 
grasses.* 
10rnith. Biog., Vol. I, pp. 284-286, 1831. 
