I lO 
SINGING BIRDS. 
mates. According tp Richardson it is the beginning of June 
when they arrive at their farthest boreal station in the 54th 
degree. We observed them in the great western plains to the 
base of the Rocky Mountains, but not in Oregon. Their win- 
tering resort appears to be rather the West Indies than the 
tropical continent, as their migrations are observed to take 
place generally to the east of Louisiana, where their visits are 
rare and irregular. At this season also they make their ap- 
proaches chiefly by night, obeying, as it were, more distinctly, 
the mandates of an overruling instinct, which prompts them to 
seek out their natal regions ; while in autumn, their progress, 
by day only, is alone instigated by the natural quest of food. 
About the ist of May the meadows of Massachusetts begin to 
re-echo their lively ditty. At this season, in wet places, and 
by newly ploughed fields, they destroy many insects and their 
larvte. According to their success in obtaining food, parties 
often delay their final northern movement as late as the mid- 
dle of May, so that they appear to be in no haste to arrive at 
their destination at any exact period. The principal business 
of their lives, however, the rearing of their young, does not 
take place until they have left the parallel of the 40th degree. 
In the savannahs of Ohio and Michigan, and the cool grassy 
meadows of New York, Canada, and New England, they fix 
their abode, and obtain a sufficiency of food throughout the 
summer without molesting the harvest of the farmer, until the 
ripening of the latest crops of oats and barley, when, in their 
autumnal and changed dress, hardly now known as the same 
species, they sometimes show their taste for plunder, and flock 
together like the greedy and predatory Blackbirds. Although 
they devour various kinds of insects and worms on their first 
arrival, I have found that their frequent visits among the grassy 
meadows were often also for the seeds they contain ; and they 
are particularly fond of those of the dock and dandelion, the 
latter of which is sweet and oily. Later in the season, and pre- 
viously to leaving their native regions, they feed principally on 
various kinds of grass-seeds, particularly those of the Panicums, 
which are allied to millet. They also devour crickets and grass- 
hoppers, as well as beetles and spiders. Their nest is fixed on 
