310 General Notes. [ March, 
were old nests, which had undergone slight repairs, so that the 
poet Longfellow, when he wrote— 
“ There are no birds in last year’s nests,” 
could not have referred to the red-wing blackbird. These nests — 
were built among the cat-tail flags and coarse grass.and reeds, 
which grow in the water. One of the nests was suspended upon 
green supports, while in the others the supporting stalks were al 
dead. The first-mentioned nest was evidently of recent construe 
tion, while the others had been used at least one previous season 
Opinion has varied much inthe past in regard to the usefulness 
of this much persecuted bird. The fact that he was in the habit 
of eating some corn, just as it was hardening out of the mik, 
created a deep-seated prejudice among superficial observers yes ‘ 
ago; but “the authorities” are all of one accord in the idea that 
it is one of our most useful birds. Wilson, in his time, esti o 
that the red-wings annually consumed in this country the 
aggregate of 16,000,000,000 of insects, the most of which p 
noxious! So much good work as that surely should entitle 
beautiful bird to the fullest measure of protection. ijk 
But I am of the opinion that the red-wings pape | 
best days” in several of the Northern States. Some dotes 
have occasionally found their nests in trees and bushes, an : 
“upon the ground. But in the great prairie States a a : 
nesting place is among the rank vegetation of the — ser 
and the margins of shallow lakes. But settlement "i 
tion are resulting in the annual reclamation of thousan in ma 
of these wet lands, and just now there is springing UP As dl 
regions almost a mania on the subject of tile ae wane 
this progresses the prairie sloughs and ponds will becom, : 
land, and cease to be the summer resorts of the red wt doa a 
will gradually retire and betake themselves to other W ed abot 
less, far-distant localities. This region has been e there 5 
twenty-five years,and in that time I am confident birds. Ë 
been quite a diminution in the vast numbers of these raids u 
the present time there is little if any complaint of yer ier yas 
the corn-fields, concerning which much was p: will wok 
ago. During the next decade tile-drainage and po species,” ; 
very marked changes in the summer homes of ded | - 
well as its frequent associate the yellow-hea here they 
(Xanthocephalus icterocephalus), and many regions ye cai 
now very abundant will doubtless only know eas Webster © 
visitants or “birds of passage.”—Charles Aldrich, d 
Towa, Fune 7, 188 te cong l 
the first CP 
MIGRATION or Nortu American Birps.-—At New Y | 
of the American Ornithologists’ Union, held in f pirds was T 
Sept. 26-28, 1883, a committee on the migra fullest exte f 
pointed to investigate, in all its bearings and to t 
