INTRODUCTION. 11 



In regard to the economic status of the blackbirds, it may be said 

 that the damage done by the redwings and some other species has 

 apparently arisen from the excessive number of individuals rather than 

 from the habits of the species. Thoughtful students of nature have 

 observed that every race or species has a certain high -water mark of 

 abundance, beyond which it can not rise without danger of encroaching 

 upon and injuring other species. This is true of every species, whether 

 at its normal abundance it be beneficial to man or otherwise. The 

 exemplification of this principle is most noticeable in the case of 

 insects, many species of which frequently exceed their ordinary 

 bounds and spread destruction among crops. But the rule is equally 

 applicable to birds; however useful they may be in a general way, it 

 is possible under certain conditions that particular species may become 

 too numerous. 



There is no reasonable doubt that in the Mississippi Valley the 

 redwings and yellowheads, and farther west Brewer's blackbird, are 

 much too abundant for the interests of the grain grower. The facili- 

 ties for nesting afforded by the prairie sloughs and marshes, where 

 for ages these species have been undisturbed, have given rise to such 

 immense hordes that they can in a few hours destroy hundreds of 

 acres of grain, or at least take so much that the remainder is not 

 worth harvesting. Originall}^ the birds obtained their food from wild 

 plants, but with the advent of civilized man and the planting of grain- 

 fields a new source of food was provided. The wild rice {Zizania 

 aijuatica)^ which was one of their favorite foods, does not ripen till 

 September, but wheat and oats are ripe from June to August, and are 

 much more abundant and more easily obtained than any of the wild 

 seeds. What wonder that the birds at once availed themselves of this 

 new supply of food spread before them with such a lavish hand! In 

 the early days of settlement the fight near large marshes to save the 

 grain from redwinged blackbirds was as fierce as is now the struggle 

 in the South to save the rice crop from the bobolinks. As the country 

 has become more thickly settled a greater area of grain is sown and 

 the damage is relatively less and more widely distributed. With the 

 further advance of civilization, and the broadening of the area of cul- 

 tivation, many of the marshes will be drained and the present nesting 

 places will become arable fields. This will necessarily reduce the 

 numbers of the birds, and it is almost certain that in time they will 

 reach the limit at which they are no longer harmful, as is already the 

 case in the Eastern States. 



Perhaps the most peculiar case presented by any of our birds is that 

 of the bobolink. Loved and cherished in the North, and there made 

 the subject of poetry and romance, in the South it is execrated and 

 destroyed and conceded but one redeeming quality — that its body is 



