12 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
their passage, as they fly in high files during the whole 
day. 
" Now begin their devastations. They plunder every field, 
but are shot in immense numbers. As they pass along the 
sea-shores, and follow the muddy edges of the rivers, cover- 
ed at that season with full-grown reeds, whose tops are bent 
down with the weight of the ripe seeds, they alight amongst 
them in countless multitudes, and afford abundant practice 
to every gunner. 
"It is particularly towards sunset, and when the weather is 
fine, that the sport of shooting Reed Birds is most profitable. 
They have then fully satiated their appetite, and have col- 
lected together for the purpose of roosting. At the discharge 
of a gun, a flock sufiicient to cover several acres rises en masse, 
and performing various evolutions, densely packed, and re- 
sembling a sultry cloud, passes over and near the sportsman, 
when he lets fly, and finds occupation for some time in pick- 
ing up the dozens which he has brought down at a single 
shot. One would think that every gun in the country has 
been put in requisition. Millions of these birds are destroy- 
ed, and yet millions remain, for after all the havoc that has 
been made among them in the Middle Districts, they follow 
the coast, and reach the rice plantations of the Carolinas in 
such astonishing numbers, that no one could conceive their 
flocks to have been already thinned. Their fl.esh is extreme- 
ly tender and juicy. The markets are amplj^ supplied, and 
the epicures have a glorious time of it." 
We have a charming counterpart of Eobert in the South 
and West, among the Orioles. He is called the Orchard or 
Parson Oriole, from the soberness of his garments ; but 0 ! 
commend us to such Parsons as he — ^the merry " clerk of 
Copenhurst" would be demure beside him ! — The gleeful, 
thoughtless, sinner! he can't go from one tree-top to an- 
other, (for he is more ambitious than Eob, and swings his 
grass- wove hammock from pinnacle orchard boughs,) without 
ranting in such a glad, rattle-pate, glorious fashion about his 
