16 FOOD OF BOBOLINK, BLACKBIRDS, AND GRACKLES, 
the field. We have tried every plan to keep these pests off our crop at less expense 
and manual labor than we now incur, and have been unsuccessful. Our present 
mode is expensive, imperfect and thoroughly unsatisfactory, yet it is the best we 
can do. ‘ 
Mr. R. Joseph Lowndes, of Annandale, S. C., in writing of the bob- 
olink and redwing, says: 
I think I am in bounds when I say that one-fourth, if not one-third of the [rice]. 
crop of this river [the Santee] is destroyed by birds from the time the seed is put 
into the land till the crops are threshed out and put in the barns—I shoot out about. 
100 kegs of powder every September, with a fair quantity of shot, say 30 to 50 bags, 
and have killed as high as 150 dozeninaday. In the bird season it takes every 
man and boy on the plantation to mind these birds. This work has to go on from 
daylight till dark in any and all weathers and at great expense for six weeks in the 
fall before the rice is ripe enough for the sickle, and then on till we can get it out of 
the fields. These birds, if not carefully minded, will utterly destroy a crop of rice 
in two or three days. 
Mr. A. X. Lucas, of McClellanville, S. C., says: 
The annual depredations of the birds are in my opinion equal in this section to the 
value of the rent of the land—to say nothing of the expense of minding the birds. 
Many similar reports of the bobolink’s damage to rice have been 
received by the Biological Survey from Southern rice growers. So 
destructive are the attacks of these birds that it is necessary to plant 
the rice previous to their coming in the spring, so that it can be under 
water when they arrive, and then to plant another lot when they have 
passed on to the north. This method is adopted not only to avoid the 
full extent of the ravages of the birds in the spring, but also that the 
first lot may mature in the fall before the birds return, and the second 
after they have passed on to their winter home. But it frequently 
happens that one of the crops is ‘in the milk’ when the birds arrive 
in August, in which case it is almost impossible to save it from total 
destruction. 
Mr. Allen C. Zard, of White Hill, 8. C., says that when rice is so 
planted as to ‘meet the birds,’ that is, to be in just the right stage of 
maturity when they arrive, and they come in full force, they will 
destroy the whole crop in spite of powder and shot or anything else. 
As a sample of actual loss, the following statement, furnished by 
Colonel Screven, gives his account with the bobolink at Savannah, Ga., 
for the year 1885: 
Cosiobaminiunition aii es cca) hated el ded oe $245, 50 
Wragesiof bird: minders 22. oc og ioe aaanjortin ede ieee els be cia 300. 00 
Rice destroyed, say 400 bushels .............--.------ ee 500. 00 
$1, 045. 50 
Colonel Screven cultivated in that year 465 acres of tidal land, so 
that he has estimated a loss of less than 1 bushel of rice to the acre, 
while most of the rice growers estimate the loss at from 4 to 5 bushels. 
