12 



FOOD OF BOBOLINK, BLACKBIRDS, AND GEACKLES. 



good to eat. In the North it does much good and practically no harm; 

 in the South it becomes a veritable pest. To a person born and reared 

 in New England and taught to regard this bird somewhat as the Hol- 

 landers regard the stork, it is an unwelcome duty to pronounce upon 

 it a verdict of condemnation, but the facts force the belief that until 

 some practical method shall be devised to prevent its ravages upon 

 the rice crop there can be no other conclusion than that the good done 

 by the bobolink does not in any appreciable measure counterbalance 

 the harm. 



THE BOBOIilNK. 



{Dolichonyx oryzivorus.) 



Within the memory of man}^ persons who have passed the half- 

 centur}'^ mark most of the literature of the bird world available to 

 Americans was that imported from Europe, and stories of the skylark 



Fig. 1.— Bobolink. 



and of the little robin-redbreast were the amusement of their simple 

 childhood. The}' often wondered why they never saw these l)irds. 

 But when American writers fully awoke to the beauty and attract- 

 iveness of their native birds, tales, both in verse and prose, of birds 

 to be seen every day in our own fields and forests began to find their 

 way into the household. Among these familiar little friends one of 

 the fii'st to be enshrined in song and story was the bobolink. 



