PURPLE GRAKLE. 
157 
fields, and begin to pull up and regale themselves on tlie seed, scatter- 
ing the green blades around. While thus eagerly employed, the ven- 
geance of the gun sometimes overtakes them ; but these disasters are 
soon forgotten, and those 
" who live to get away, 
Return to steal, another day." 
About the beginning of August, when the young ears are in tlieir milky 
state, they are attacked with redoubled eagerness by the Grakles and 
Red-wings, in formidable and combined bodies. They descend like a 
blackening, sAveeping tempest, on the corn, dig ofiF the external covering 
of twelve or fifteen coats of leaves, as dexterously as if done by the 
hand of man, and having laid bare the ear, leave little behind to the 
farmer but the cobs, and shrivelled skins that contained their favorite 
fare. I have seen fields of corn of many acres, where more than one- 
half was thus ruined. Indeed the farmers in the immediate vicinity of 
the rivers Delaware and Schuylkill, generally allow one-fourtli of this 
crop to the Blackbirds, among whom our Grakle comes in for his full 
share. During these depredations, the gun is making great havoc 
among their numbers, which has no other eff"ect on the survivors than to 
send them to another field, or to another part of the same fiehl. This 
system of plunder and of retaliation continues until November, when 
towards the middle of that month they begin to slieer off" towards the 
south. The lower parts of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and 
Georgia, are the wipter residences of these flocks. Here numerous 
bodies, collecting together from all quarters of the interior and northern 
districts, and darkening the air with their numbers, sometimes form one 
congregated multitude of many hundred thousands. A few miles from 
the banks of the Roanoke, on the twentieth of January, I met with one 
of those prodigious armies of Grakles. They rose from tlie surround- 
ing fields Avith a noise like thunder, and descending on tlie length of 
road before me, covered it and the fences completely with black ; and 
when they again rose, and after a few evolutions descended on the 
skirts of the high timbered Avoods, at that time destitute of leaves, they 
produced a most singular and striking efl'ect ; the Avhole trees for a con- 
siderable extent, from the top to the lowest branches, seeming as if 
hung in mourning ; their notes and screaming the meauAvhile resembling 
the distant sound of a great cataract, but in more musical cadence, 
SAvelling and dying aAvay on the ear according to the fluctuation of the 
breeze. In Kentucky, and all along the Mississippi, from its junction 
with the Ohio to the Balize, I found numbers of these birds, so that 
the Purple Grakle may be considered as a very general inhabitant of 
the territory of the United States. 
Every industrious farmer complains of the mischief committed on his 
