30 
USEFUL BIRDS 
This dandy amongst birds — a fa^^orite of l)ird lovers and sub- 
ject of many a song and poem — is a common and welcome summer 
resident here, blling the belds with drunken melody, while bis 
more modestly-colored mate is sitting quietly on her nest, Avell 
bidden in grass or clover. So familiar to all is this songster that 
with the above excellent illustration before us, no verf^al descrip- 
tion is necessary. 
ddie beauty and song of the male bird are but transient qual- 
ities, for after the breeding season, be loses bis bne clothes, be- 
comes dull olive-colored, streaked with black, like the female and 
young, and, in the fall, flocks southward to wild rice marshes and 
cultivated rice flelds, wintering- in South America. At night one 
fre(piently realizes flocks of these birds are passing, by hearing 
their metallic ‘‘Chink” in the darkened sky above. As “reed bird” 
and “rice bird,” they And their way into the markets of the East 
and South, fattened by voracious feeding in the rice fields. While 
with us in the Xorth, they eat large numbers of injurious insects. 
