454 MICHIGAN BIRD LIFE. 
follows: ‘They blacken the fields 
and crowd the air. The bare trees 
on which they alight are foliaged by 
them. Their incessant jingling songs 
drown the music of the Meadowlarks - 
ig. 108. 
and produce a dreamy far-away effect Wing of Rusty Blackbird. 
as of myriads of distant sleigh bells” Reerrece! 
(Birds of Manitoba, p. 581). During their spring visit in Michigan the 
food seems to consist entirely of weed-seeds, waste grain, and such insects 
and other scraps of animal life as they can pick up in the marshes and 
around the edges of ponds and streams. They are specially fond of damp 
places and are continually wading in the shallow edges of pools and streams, 
apparently never so happy as when their feet are wet. In autumn they 
frequent stubble fields, corn fields and sometimes the beech woods, feeding 
on practically the same substances as in spring, though probably with a 
larger proportion of insects. The examination of 132 stomachs by the 
Department of Agriculture at Washington shows a larger proportion of 
animal matter (53 percent) than in any other American blackbird except 
the Bobolink. They eat immense numbers of water-beetles and their 
larve (which probably have no economic importance), but they also eat 
snout-beetles, leaf-beetles, May-beetles and numerous other Coleoptera, 
most of which are harmful. In autumn grasshoppers form a very large 
part of their food, amounting to nearly 40 percent. They eat but little 
wheat, oats or corn, except waste in the fields, and it is not probable that 
they pull up sprouting grain, although this has been alleged. On the whole 
this species is at least as beneficial as harmful, and probably has a large 
margin to its credit on the beneficial side. 
As already stated, it is not known to nest within our limits, and the only 
record at hand of a nest in this latitude is the statement that one was 
found at Storr’s Lake, near Milton, Wisconsin, in June 1861 (Kumlien and 
Hollister, Birds of Wisconsin, p. 89). We are also informed by Mr. F. C. 
Hubel of Detroit, that he and Mr. Kay found a pair feeding young, near 
Cobalt, Nipissing district, Ont., in the summer of 1905. According to 
Job it breeds abundantly on the Magdalene Islands, in the Gulf of St. 
Lawrence, where it nests like the Robin, ‘low down in spruces, usually 
near the ends of thick boughs” (Auk, XVIII, 1901, 200). 
The eggs are described by Bendire as light bluish-green, blotched and 
spotted with different shades of chocolate and chestnut-brown and lighter 
shades of ecru, drab and pearl-gray. The eggs are four or five in a set, 
and average .99 by .73 inches. 
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION. 
Adult male: In spring, glossy greenish black all over, sometimes (usually) with very 
narrow whitish or rusty edgings on a few feathers, particularly the under tail-coverts; in 
autumn, black, all the feathers of the forward half of the bird margined more or less strongly 
with buff, rusty, or chestnut, most heavily on the top of head amd interscapular region; 
bill and feet black, iris straw-yellow. 
Adult female: In spring, uniform slate-color, with scanty buffy or rusty edgings, which 
are remnants of the winter plumage; in autumn, similar, but with the slate-color overlaid 
on head, breast and back with rusty brown or even chestnut; often a conspicuous light stripe 
extending backward from above the eye. Young are similar to the adult female at first, 
but the males soon show much blacker wings and tail. 
Length 8.20 to 9.75 inches; wing 4.25 to 4.75; tail 3.65 to 4.20; culmen .70 to .80. 
