250 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIKDS 



May 14, 1853. The still dead-looking willows and 

 button-bushes are alive with red-wings, now perched 

 on a yielding twig, now pursuing a female swiftly over 

 the meadow, now darting across the stream. No two 

 have epaulets equally brilliant. Some are small and 

 almost white, and others a brilliant vermilion. They 

 are handsomer than the golden robin, methinks. The 

 yellowbird, kingbird, and pewee, beside many swal- 

 lows, are also seen. But the rich colors and the rich 

 and varied notes of the blackbirds surpass them 

 all. 



June 24, 1853. Also got a blackbird's nest whose 

 inhabitants had flown, hung by a kind of small dried 

 rush (?) between two button-bushes which crossed above 

 it ; of meadow-grass and sedge, dried Mikania scandens 

 vine, horse-tail, fish-lines, and a strip apparently of a 

 lady's bathing-dress, lined with a somewhat finer grass ; 

 of a loose and ragged texture to look at. Green mikania 

 running over it now. 



April 18, 1854. Heard a red-wing sing his bobylee 

 in new wise, as if he tossed up a fourpence and it rat- 

 tled on some counter in the air as it went up. 



May 16, 1854. Looked into several red-wing black- 

 birds' nests which are now being built, but no eggs yet. 

 They are generally hung between two twigs, say of 

 button-bush. I noticed at one nest what looked like a 

 tow string securely tied about a twig at each end about 

 six inches apart, left loose in the middle. It was not 

 a string, but I think a strip of milkweed pod, etc., — 

 water asclepias probably, — maybe a foot long and very 

 strong. How remarkable that this bird should have 



