THE BOBOLINK. 13 



The peculiar difference in the plumage of the two sexes and the 

 idiosyncrasies of the song of the male have long rendered the bobo- 

 link a marked bird in its summer home in the Northern States. Few 

 species show such striking contrasts in the color of the sexes, and few 

 have songs more unique and whimsical. Even the early settlers 

 recognized the grotesqueness of some of its notes in their imitative 

 name of ' conquiddle.' In the South it is universally known as the 

 ' ricebird,' from its habit of preying upon rice, while in the Middle 

 States during its southward migration it is called ' reedbird.' 



The breeding range of the bobolink is confined to the Transition 

 and Carolinian zones. It occupies the northern part of the United 

 States and the southern part of the British Provinces, extending from 

 the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, and locally beyond to eastern 

 Idaho and eastern Nevada (see frontispiece). In winter the bird retires 

 beyond our southern border, ranging southward as far as Brazil. In 

 the last half of April it enters the United States just as the rice is 

 sprouting in Southern rice fields, and at once begins to pull up and 

 feed upon the sprouted kernels. Its stay is short, for this is the 

 season of reproduction, and it hastens northward to enter upon that 

 function. 



The nesting usually takes place in a meadow or mowing field, not far 

 from a running brook or spring, and the young are generally upon 

 the wing in the latter part of July. Up to this time they have been 

 fed upon insects, but now the whole family, clad in plain clothes (for 

 the male has lost his bright spring garb), betake themselves to swamps 

 for wild rice, to weed patches for seed, or sometimes to grainfields for 

 oats; but all the time they move slowly toward the South. The small 

 flocks unite; all those that breed in the northeastern part of the coun- 

 try concentrate along the marshes and inlets of the seashore, and the 

 whole body, constantly growing by accessions from other parts of the 

 range, moves steadily southward toward the rice fields — an army vaster 

 than that of Xerxes. The birds begin to arrive upon the rice fields 

 about August 20, and from that time until the last of them wing their 

 way to their winter home, nearly two months later, there is no rest for 

 the unfortunate rice grower. They swarm upon the fields by millions, 

 and when frightened off' at one place at once settle upon another a 

 short distance away. 



In some of the previous publications on the bobolink the havoc 

 the bird causes among the rice fields of the South does not appear. 

 Audubon mentions its injury to cornfields in Virginia, Maryland, 

 and Pennsylvania, and states that its food consists of grubs, cater- 

 pillars, beetles, grasshoppers, crickets, and ground spiders, and the 

 seeds of wild oats {Zizania aquaticaf), wheat, barley, rice, and other 

 grasses/ 



lOrnith. Biog., Vol. I, pp. 284-286, 1831. 



