PURPLE GRAKLE. 
335 
pull up and regale themselves on the seed, scattering the green 
blades around. While thus eagerly employed, the vengeance 
of the gun sometimes overtakes them ; but these disasters are 
soon forgotten, and those 
who live to get away, 
Return to steal, another day. 
About the beginning of August, when the young ears are in 
their milky state, they are attacked with redoubled eagerness 
by the Grakles and Redwings, in formidable and combined 
bodies. They descend like a blackening, sweeping tempest 
on the corn, dig off the external covering of twelve or fifteen 
coats of leaves, as dexterously as if done by the hand of man, 
and, having laid bare the ear, leave little behind to the farmer 
but the cobs, and shrivelled skins, that contained their favourite 
fare. I have seen fields of corn of many acres, where more 
than one-half was thus ruined. Indeed the farmers in the 
immediate vicinity of the rivers Delaware and Schuylkill, 
generally allow one-fourth of this crop to the Blackbirds, 
among whom our Grakle comes in for his full share. During 
these depredations, the gun is making great havoc among 
their numbers, which has no other effect on the survivors than 
to send them to another field, or to another part of the same 
field. This system of plunder and retaliation continues until 
November, when, towards the middle of that month, they 
begin to sheer off towards the south. The lower parts of 
Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, are the 
winter residences of these flocks. Here numerous bodies, 
collecting together from all quarters of the interior and 
northern districts, and darkening the air with their numbers, 
sometimes form one congregated multitude of many hundred 
thousands. A few miles from the banks of the Roanoke, on 
the 20th of January, 1 met with one of those prodigious armies 
of Grakles. They rose from the surrounding fields with a 
noise like thunder, and, descending on the length of road 
before me, covered it and the fences completely with black ; 
