BOBOLINK. 
II3 
the performers awake or relapse into rest ; it finally becomes 
more distinct and tumultuous, till with the opening day it as- 
sumes the intelligible character of their ordinary song. The 
young males, towards the close of July, having nearly acquired 
their perfect character, utter also in the morning, from the 
trees which border their favorite maishy meadows, a very 
agreeable and continuous low warble, more like that of the 
Yellow Bird than the usual song of the species ; in fact, they 
appear now in every respect as Finches, and only become 
jingling musicians w’hen robed in their pied dress as Icteri. 
.•\bout the middle of August, in congregating numbers, di- 
vested already of all selective attachment, vast foraging parties 
enter New York and Pennsylvania, on their way to the South. 
Here, along the shores of the large rivers, lined with floating 
fields of the wild rice, they find an abundant means of sub- 
sistence during their short stay ; and as their flesh, now fat, is 
little inferior to that of the European Ortolan, the Reed or Rice 
Birds, as they are then called in their Sparrow-dress, form a 
favorite sport for gunners of all descriptions, who turn out on 
the occasion and commit prodigious havoc among the almost 
silent and greedy roosting throng. The markets are then filled 
with this delicious game, and the pursuit, both for success and 
amusement, along the picturesque and reedy shores of the Del- 
aware and other rivers is second to none but that of Rail- 
shooting. As soon as the cool nights of October commence, 
and as the wild rice crops begin to fail, the Reed Birds 
take their departure from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and in 
their farther progress through the Southern States they swarm 
in the rice fields j and before the crop is gathered they have 
already made their appearance in the islands of Cuba and 
Jamaica, where they also feed on the seeds of the Guinea 
grass, become so fat as to deserve the name of “ Butter-birds,” 
and are in high esteem for the table. 
Near the Atlantic coast the Bobolink is not common north of 
the 45th parallel ; but in the West it ranges to much higher latitudes. 
A few examples have been observed on the New Brunswick shore 
of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
voi.. I. — 8 
