34 



FOOD OF BOBOLINK, BLACKBIRDS, AND GEACKLES. 



species. In many places, especially on the borders of shallow lakes, 

 thousands of acres of rushes and reeds of various kinds afford nesting 

 sites for redwings, yellowheads, and marsh wrens, while myriads of 

 more aquatic species swim in the waters below and nest amid the 

 broken herbage. It is from such breeding grounds that the vast 

 jlocks are recruited that make such havoc upon fields of grain and call 

 forth the maledictions of the unfortunate farmer. East of the Appa- 

 lachian Range the conditions are different. Marshes on the shores of 

 lakes, rivers, and estuaries are here the onh?- sites available for breed- 

 ing purposes, and as these are more restricted in number and area 

 than the western breeding grounds the species is much less abundant 

 than in the West. 



Fig. "1.— Red-wingod blackbird. 



Like their associates, the marsh Avrens, and their neighl^ors, the 

 bank swallows, the redwings are eminently gregarious, living in flocks 

 for the greater part of the time and breeding in comnnuiities which 

 vary in size according to the area of the swamp they occupy. Some- 

 times these colonies are reduced to a single family, which in such 

 cases usually consists of one male bird with several females and their 

 nests; for this species practices polygamy, a habit noted in the case 

 of only a few species of song birds. 



During the winter the redwings are in the South, but may occasion- 

 allj^ be found as far north as latitude 40^, and stragglers ma_y occur at 

 any point within their summer I'ange. (A young male was shot by the 

 writer in central loAva in January, 1879, and one bird whose stomach 



