The Bobolink 151 
differently attired in a streaked, sparrow-like costume, as our portrait 
in colors clearly shows. 
After family cares are over, in common with all birds, both Bobo- 
link and his wife shed their now worn plumage, and an entirely new 
one is grown. With Mrs. Bobolink, this is not unlike the one she has 
just molted; but Bob himself, in making his change 
of dress, adopts the costume of his wife. Thereafter Mating 
both are known as Reedbirds, or Ricebirds, as they 
journey southward, or, in Jamaica, as Butter-birds, as we have seen; and 
no one may say by dress alone which is Mrs. or which is Mr. Bobolink. 
They continue thus to look alike until the following February, when 
again all the old feathers are shed and new ones grown. Styles do not 
change in the Bobolink world, and Mrs. Bobolink again takes the 
streaked dress which she and her ancestors have 
worn as long as any one knows ; but Bob prepares Plumage 
for the season of courtship by donning his suit of 
black and buff, not, as yet, however, fully displayed, but partly con- 
cealed, as it were, by a yellowish cloak, which we find is composed 
of tips to the black feathers. As the summer home is approached these 
yellow tips drop off, and, in due time, reveal the jaunty garment beneath. 
The young Bobolinks, whether male or female, wear a plumage 
resembling that of their mother on leaving the nest, and the males acquire 
the black-and-buff plumage in the following spring. 
Bobolink, however, does not rely on the charms of his plumage alone 
to win him a mate, but woos her also by his voice ; and such a voice ! 
What Bobolink could resist it? Did there ever issue from throat of bird 
so eloquent an expression of the season’s joys? Lowell must have 
felt this when he wrote : 
“The Bobolink has come, and like the soul 
Of a sweet season, vocal in a bird, 
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what 
Save June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June.” 
But if this be said of the song of one Bobolink, what shall we say 
when hundreds sing together, as they do in the South in the spring, 
clustering in the trees like Red-winged Blackbirds in March, and pro- 
ducing a chorus to which even the poets could not do justice. 
Soon after arriving, nest-building begins. The nest is a simple 
affair of grasses placed on the ground in a slight depression, where the 
rim is even with the surrounding surface. The four 
to seven eggs are grayish, with numerous irregular Nest 
spots and blotches of brown. The birds are careful 
not to betray the situation of their home. The male does not sing too 
near it ; and the female does not leave nor return to it directly, but goes 
a short distance through the grass. 
