66 
BIRDS OF DURHAM AND VICINITY. 
bovine society, whence its name, and for its habit of depositing its 
eggs in the nests of other birds, the young to be hatched and fed by 
the victims of such imposition, to the neglect of their own progeny. 
They are not so common here in the vicinity of the college in sum- 
mer as in some other localities. I have found one Cowbird's egg in 
the nest of a Yellow Warbler, near Thompson hall, the first of June. 
During the latter part of August, they assemble in flocks and repair 
to localities furnishing an abundance of seeds, upon which they mainly 
subsist after summer time. It is October before the last of them go 
south . 
Agelaius phoeniceus. Red-winged Blackbird. 498. 
The Red-winged Blackbird is one of the "harbingers of spring,''' 
coming early in March, if the weather is favorable, usual^- but a day or 
two behind the foremost Robins. The males appear first, the females 
coming from two to three weeks later. For instance, I saw in 1889 
males on the fifth of April, but I saw none of the other sex till the 
thirtieth of that month. The males pass the time intervening between 
their arrival and the coming of their mates, foraging in the fields. At 
that early season the marshes and swamps, their summer haunts, are 
not free from ice, and the females linger in the southland till their 
northern home is habitable, so that we rarely see them in the fields in 
spring as we do the males. The date of appearance mentioned above is 
a verv late one, owing to the ice storm which kept all birds away that 
year till the first of April. The preceding year the males came March 
9. The nest is a coarsely built structure near the ground among flags 
or in a small bush, frequently surrounded by water. After the young 
are hatched, their parents are often seen in the newly mown fields 
catching grasshoppers. As soon as the young are strong, that is, by the 
middle of August, they begin their peregrinations, which end in their 
final southward movement. Where the hundreds and thousands that 
breed in this state and northward stay from the time they leave their 
nesting grounds till they finally go south I am not informed, but from 
the time of their disappearance in August till late in September one is 
rarely seen. I have observed flocks on the final migration at different 
times between September 27 and November 11. In 1899 a flock 
of several hundred, including Red-wings, Cowbirds and Bronzed 
Crackles dined in Mr. George Hoyfs cornfield on the twenty-fifth of 
October. The only breeding place that I know of in this immediate 
vicinity is in the swamp lying west of the Newmarket road about two 
miles from here. 
