The Purple and the Bronzed Crackles 149 
yellow eyes that make you suspect they may 
be witches in disguise. Their mates are a trifle 
smaller and duller. 
When the trees are still leafless in earliest 
spring and the ground is brown and cold, flocks 
of blackbirds dot the bare trees or take shelter 
from March winds among their favourite ever- 
greens, or walk solemnly about on the earth 
like small crows, feeding on fat white grubs 
and beetles in a business-like way. They 
are singularly joyless birds. A croaking, wheezy 
whistle, like the sound of a cart wheel that needs 
axle-grease, expresses whatever pleasure they 
may have in life. 
Always sociable, living in flocks the entire 
year through, it is in autumn only that they 
band together in enormous numbers, and in 
the West especially, do serious havoc in the 
cornfields. However, they do incalculable good 
as insect destroyers, so the farmers must for- 
give the “maize thieves.’^ 
Was ever a family so ill-assorted as the black- 
bird and oriole clan? What traits are common 
to every member of it? Not one, that I know. 
Some of the family, as you have seen, are gor- 
geously clad, like the Baltimore oriole; some 
quite plainly, like the cowbird; and although 
black seems to be a prevalent colour in the 
