288 COW B UNTING. 



throat, and from which the figures of the young bird and male 

 cow bird in the plate were taken. The figure in the act of 

 feeding it is the female Maryland yellow-throat in whose nest 

 it was found. I claim, however, no merit for a discovery not 

 originally my own, these singular habits having long been 

 known to people of observation resident in the country, whose 

 information, in this case, has preceded that of all our school 

 philosophers and closet naturalists, to whom the matter has, 

 till now, been totally unknown. 



About the 25th of March, or early in April, the cowpen 

 bird makes his first appearance in Pennsylvania from the 

 south, sometimes in company with the red-winged blackbird, 

 more frequently in detached parties, resting early in the 

 morning, an hour at a time, on the tops of trees near streams 

 of water, appearing solitary, silent, and fatigued. They con- 

 tinue to be occasionally seen in small solitary parties, parti- 

 cularly along creeks and banks of rivers, so late as the middle 

 of June ; after which, we see no more of them until about 

 the beginning or middle of October, when they reappear in 

 much larger flocks, generally accompanied by numbers of the 

 redwings, between whom and the present species there is a con- 

 siderable similarity of manners, dialect, and personal resem- 

 blance. In these aerial voyages, like other experienced navi- 

 gators, they take advantage of the direction of the wind, 

 and always set out with a favourable gale. My venerable 

 and observing friend, Mr Bartram, writes me on the 13th 

 of October as follows : — " The day before yesterday, at the 

 height of the northeast storm, prodigious numbers of the cow- 

 pen birds came by us, in several flights of some thousands in 

 a flock. Many of them settled on trees in the garden to rest 

 themselves, and then resumed their voyage southwards. 

 There were a few of their cousins, the redwings, with them. 

 We shot three, a male and two females." 



From the early period at which these birds pass in the 

 spring, it is highly probable that their migrations extend 

 very far north. Those which pass in the months of March 



