and quickly. Their call-note, a -very loud and peculiar tack, tack, is constantly heard 

 at intervals while they are flying, but when walking on the ground they are perfectly 

 silent. They are equally well at home on the ground, among the branches of trees, and 

 in the air. Cultivated, well-watered, and wooded localities are always selected as a 

 home, while the vast dry prairies, arid mountainous regions, and the deep interior of 

 large forests are avoided. Being rarely molested by man in theif breeding haunts, they 

 fearlessly enter gardens and orchards even in villages and towns. 



Early in June the nest is completed and a full complement of eggs found. Usually 

 they build in large bushes and in trees, of all sizes, but I have often discovered nests in 

 the upturned roots of large trees and in Woodpecker's holes. In trees the nest is placed 

 from five to twenty-five and sometimes fifty feet from the ground. In the neighborhood 

 of dwelHngs it is preferably built in Lombardy poplars, but I have found it also in 

 pines and firs, in willows and orchard trees. These birds can be induced to breed in 

 ■ gardens- if suitable nesting-boxes are provided. Although a bulky structure, the nest 

 is very compact and well built. In cavities only soft, slender grasses are used, but in 

 trees and bushes plant-stems, grasses, and mud are employed, and the interior is lined 

 with, finer grasses. Often several nests are built in one tree. The eggs, four to six in 

 number, are light greenish or smoky-blue, with irregular marbelings, dots, blotches,- and 

 scrawls of blackish distributed over the entire surface. 



The young are fed exclusively with all kinds of insects. When they have left the 

 nest, the loud carack-acju-ack of the hungry bobtails is almost constantly heard, but 

 they are instantly silent when they hear the warning notes of the old birds. 



This Blackbird has a bad reputation as a destroyer pf corn. "Their depredations 

 on the maize crop or Indian com," says Nuttall, "commence almost with the planting. 

 The infant blades no sooner appear than they are hailed by the greedy Blackbird as the 

 signal for a feasti; and, without hesitation, they descend on the fields, and regale them- 

 selves with the sweet and sprouted seed, rejecting and scattering the blades around as 

 an evidence of their mischief and audacity. Again, about the beginning of August, while 

 the grain is in the milky state, their attacks are renewed with the most destructive 

 effect, as they now assemble as it were in clouds, and pillage the fields to such a degree 

 that in some low and sheltered situations, in the vicinity of rivers, where they delight 

 to roam, one fourth of the crop is devoured by these vexatious visitors. The gun, also, 

 notwithstanding the havoc it produces, has little more effect than to chase them from 

 one part of the field to the other. In the Southern States, in winter, they hover round 

 the corn-cribs in swarms, and boldly peck the hard grain from the cob through the air 

 openings 'of the magazine. In consequence of these reiterated depredations they are 

 detested by the farmer as a pest to his industry; though, on their arrival, their food 

 for a long time consists wholly of those insects which are calculated to dp the most 

 essential injury to the crops. Thfey, at this season, frequent swamps and meadows, 

 and familiarly following the furrows of the plow, sweep up all the gi-ub-worms, and 

 other noxious animals, as soon as they appear, even scratching up the loose soil, that 

 nothing of this kind may escape them. Up to the time of harvest, I have uniformly, on 

 dissection, found their food to consist of these larvae, caterpillars, moths, and beetles, "of 

 which they devour such numbers, that but for this providential economy, the whole 



