RICE BUNTING. 
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beautiful, bis song highly musical, and his flesh excellent. I 
might also add, that the immense range of his migrations, and 
the havoc he commits, are not the least interesting parts of 
his history.* 
The winter residence of this species I suppose to be from 
Mexico to the mouth of the Amazon, from whence, in hosts 
innumerable, they regularly issue every spring; perhaps to both 
hemispheres, extending their migrations northerly, as far as the 
banks of the Illinois, and the shores of the St Lawrence. Could 
the fact be ascertained, which has been asserted by some writers, 
that the emigration of these birds was altogether unknown in 
this part of the continent, previous to the introduction of rice 
plantations, it would certainly be interesting. Yet, why 
should these migrations reach at least a thousand miles beyond 
those places where rice is now planted ; and this, not in 
occasional excursions, but regularly to breed, and rear their 
young, where rice never was, and probably never will be, 
cultivated ? Their so recent arrival on this part of the conti- 
nent, I believe to be altogether imaginary, because, though 
there were not a single grain of rice cultivated within the 
United States, the country produces an exuberance of food, 
of which they are no less fond. Insects of various kinds, 
grubs, May-flies, and caterpillars, the young ears of Indian 
* To Wilson’s interesting account of the habits of this curious bird, Mr 
Audubon adds the following particulars : — In Louisiana, they pass under 
the name of Meadow Birds, and they arrive there in small docks of males and 
females about the middle of March or beginning of April. Their song in 
spring is extremely interesting, and, emitted with a volubility bordering on 
the burlesque, is heard from a whole party at the same time, and it becomes 
amusing to hear thirty or forty of them beginning one after another, as if ordered 
to follow in quick succession, after the first notes are given by a leader, and 
producing such a medley as it is impossible to describe, although it is extremely 
pleasant to hear. While you are listening, the whole flock simultaneously 
ceases, which appears equally extraordinary. This curious exhibition takes 
place every time the flock has alighted on a tree. 
Another curious fact mentioned by this gentleman is, that during their 
spring migrations eastward, they fly mostly at night ; whereas, in autumn, 
when they are returning southward, their flight is diurnal Ed. 
