SPECIES 2 . GRACULA QUISCALA. 
PURPLE GRAKLE. 
[Plate XXL — Fig. 4.] 
La Pie de la Jamaique, Brisson, ii, 41. — Buffon, hi, 97, PL Enl. 
538. — Jlvct. Zool.p. 309, Ao. 154. — Gracula purpurea, the les- 
ser Purple Jackdaw, nr Crow Blackbird, Bartkam, p. 291. — 
Pk.vle’s Museum, jYo. 1582.* 
'Phis noted depredator is well known to every farmer of the 
northern and middle states. About the twentieth of March the 
Purple Grakles visit Pennsylvania from the south, fly in loose 
flocks, frequent swamps and meadows, and follow in the furrows 
after the plough; their food at this season consisting of worms, 
grubs, and caterpillars, of which they destroy prodigious num- 
bers, as if to recompense the husbandman before hand for the 
havock they intend to make among his crops of Indian corn. 
Towards evening they I’etire to the nearest cedars and pine 
trees to roost; making a continual chattering as they fly along. 
On the tallest of these trees they generally build their nests in 
company, about the beginning or middle of April; some- 
times ten or fifteen nests being on the same tree. One of these 
nests, taken from a high pine tree, is now before me. It mea- 
sures full five inches in diameter within, and four in depth; is 
composed outwardly of mud, mixed with long stalks and roots 
of a knotty kind of grass, and lined with fine bent and horse 
hair. The eggs are five, of a bluish olive colour, marked with 
large spots and straggling streaks of black and dark brown, also 
* We add the following’ synonymes: Boat-tailed Grakle, Lath. Gen. Syn, 1, 
ji. 460, Yo. 6. — Maize-thief, Kalm’s Travels. — Sturnus quiscala, UAuniiir, 2, p. 
316. — Gracula barita, Journal . lead. Air/. Sciences of Philad. vol. 1, p. 254. — 
Quiscala versicolor, Bonaparte’s Ornithology, vol. i, p. 42, pi, F, female. 
