BIRDS OF PENNSYLVANIA. 
207 
and eggs are described by Dr. Cones as follows: “ The Bobolink makes 
a rude and flimsy nest of dried grass on the ground, and lays four or 
five eggs, 0.85 long by about 0.63 broad, dull bluish-white, sometimes 
brownish-white, spotted and blotched with dark chocolate or blackish- 
brown surface marks, and others of paler hue in the shell. The nests 
are cunningly hidden, and often further screened from threatened ob- 
servation by ingenious devices of the parents .” — (From Birds of Nortli- 
ivest.) The food of these birds, during their spring sojourn in Pennsyl- 
vania is composed chiefly of different kinds of terrestrial insects, also 
the seeds of various weeds, grasses, etc. I have examined the stomach 
contents of twenty-seven Bobolinks (captured in Chester county, Pa., 
May, 1879, ’80, ’82 and ’83), and found that eighteen had fed exclusively 
on beetles, larvae, ants and a few earth-worms ; five, in addition to insects 
and larvae, showed small seeds, and particles of green vegetable materials, 
apparently leaves of plants; the four remaining birds revealed only 
small black and yellow colored seeds. After the breeding season the 
Beed-birds (both sexes), about the middle of August, again make their 
appearance in our meadows and grain fields. At this time, although 
various forms of insects are abundant, they subsist almost entirely on a 
vegetable diet. They visit the cornfields, and, in company with the 
English Sparrow, prey to a more or less extent on the corn; like the 
sparrow they tear open the tops of the husk and eat the milky grain. 
Fields of Hungarian grass are resorted to and the seed eagerly devoured. 
The different seeds of weeds and grasses which grow so luxuriantly in 
the marshy swamps and meadows are likewise fed upon with avidity. 
The following interesting remarks, relative to the Bice-birds, are taken 
from the annual report of the Agricultural Department, for the year 
1886, by Dr. C. Hart Merriam, ornithologist. United States Department 
of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. : 
‘‘ One of the most important industries of the southern states, the cul- 
tivation of rice, is crippled and made precarious by the bi-annual attacks 
of birds. Many kinds of birds feed upon rice, but the bird which does 
the most injury than all the rest is the Bobolink {Doliclionyx oryzivorus). 
* * * The name of ‘‘ Bice-bird ” is familiar to most persons in the 
north, but the magnitude of its depredations is hardly known outside 
of the narrow belt of rice fields along the coasts of a few of the southern 
states. Innumerable hosts of these birds visit the fields at the time of 
planting in spring, devouring the seed-grain before the fields are 
flooded, and again at harvest-time in the fall, when, if maturing grain is 
‘in the milk,’ they feed upon it to a ruinous extent. To prevent total 
destruction of the crop during the periods of bird invasion thousands 
of men and boys, called ‘bird-minders,’ are employed, hundreds of thou- 
sands of pounds of gunpowder are burned, and millions of birds are 
killed. Still the number of birds invading the lace fields each j^ear 
