ICTEBID^ — AGEL^IN^ : MAESH BLACKBIIWS. 
401 
edged with yellowish ; bill blackish-horn ; feet brown. The faultless full dress of black, white, 
and buff is worn only for a brief period ; and even in spring and summer, most males are found 
to have yellowish touches in the black, especially of the under parts. The delirious song" 
is only heard while the males are trooping their way to their breeding-grounds, and before the 
midsummer change of feather. $ in fall, 9 , and young, entirely different in color : Yellowish- 
brown above, brownish-yellow below ; crown and back conspicuously, nape, rump, and sides 
less broadly, streaked with black ; crown with a median and lateral light stripe ; wings and 
tail blackish, pale-edged ; bill brown, paler below. In this, the ordinary condition, the $ is 
only known by superior size. Fall birds are more bufly than the spring 9 • The $ changing 
shows confused characters of both sexes (see p. 89) ; but in any plumage the species may bo 
recognized by the stiffish, extremely acute tail-feathers, in connection with its special dimensions. 
$ : Length 7.00-7.50; extent 11.50-12.25 ; wing 3.50-3.80; tail 2.75-3.00; tarsus 1.00; 
middle toe and claw 1.25. 9 : Length 6.50-7.00 ; extent 10.50-11.25 ; wing 3.25-3.50, etc., 
averaging i an inch less in length and an inch in extent. Chiefly Eastern U. S. and Canada ; 
N. to 54° in the region of the Saskatchewan, W. not ordinarily beyond the central plains, but 
occurs in Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. Winters wholly extralimital. In May, the 
vivacious, voluble, and eccentric Bobo- 
links " pass North, spreading over the 
meadows of the Middle and Northern 
States from the Atlantic to Kansas and 
Dakota, perfecting its black dress, and 
breeding in June and July. After the 
midsummer change the ^^Keed-bird" or 
^^Kice-bird" comes back, thronging the 
marshes in immense flocks with the Black- 
birds ; has simply a chirping note, feeds on 
the wild oats and wild rice, and becomes 
extremely fat and is accounted a great 
delicacy. The name ortolan," applied 
by some gunners and restaurateurs to this 
bird, as well as to the Carolina Bail (Por- 
zana Carolina) is in either case a strange 
misnomer, the Ortolan being a fringilline bird of Europe, Emheriza Jiortulana L. (Lat. hortu- 
lanus, relating to a garden.) In the West Indies, where this bird retires in winter, as it does 
also to Central and South America, it is called '^butter-bird." The names bobolink" and 
" meadow- wink " are in imitation of its cry; ''skunk blackbird" notes the resemblance in 
color to the obnoxious quadruped. The migrations are performed mostly at night, when in 
May and early September one may hear the mellow metallic " chink" of the invisible passen- 
gers. Nest on the ground, artfully concealed in the grass; eggs 4-6,0.90X0.65, stone-gray, 
dotted, mottled, and clouded with dark browns. 
99. MOLiO'THRUS. (Gr. /xoXo^po?, or fioXo^pos, vagabond, tramp, parasite.) Cowbirds. Bill 
short, stout, conic and fringilline, about f as long as head ; but entirely unnotched and 
unbristled, with little bent of commissure, the broad culmen running well up on the forehead, 
the nostrils well in advance of the feathers. Wings long and pointed, the first 3 primaries 
entering into the tip, rest rapidly graduated. Tail shorter than wings, nearly even or a little 
rounded, tending to divaricate in the middle, the feathers broad and plane to their rounded ends. 
Feet strong ; tarsus not shorter than middle toe. ^ black and lustrous, without red or yellow ; 
9 plain black or brown. Terrestrial, but not specially palustrine ; eminently gregarious and 
polygamous, or rather communistic, never mating or building nests ; thus parasitic, like the Old 
World cuckoos ; no musical ability. To the single species long notorious in the U. S., a second 
26 
Fig. 257. — Bobolink, (f, reduced. (Slieppard del. 
Nicliols sc.) 
