148 
INSESSORES. 
the root of the plant, however, being perennial, they 
do not exterminate it. 
Audubon says they do not confine themselves to 
the Cockle Bur exclusively, but attack all kinds of 
fruit indiscriminately, on which account they are al- 
ways unwelcome visitors to the planter. They are 
particularly destructive to the grain-stacks, upon 
which they alight in numbers sufficient almost to 
cover it, pulling out the straws and scattering it 
about, thus wasting as much as they eat. While thus 
occupied, the farmer has a good opportunity of taking 
vengeance upon them for their unwarrantable intru- 
sion. When once fired upon, all the survivors will 
rise, shriek, fly around a few minutes, and then alight 
again upon the same spot. The gun being kept 
vigorously at work, almost the entire flock is some- 
times destroyed. At each discharge, the living birds 
fly over their slain or wounded companions, shrieking 
as loudly as ever, but still returning to the stack to 
receive their measure of what the farmer would call 
retributive justice. 
These birds roost in companies, occupying the 
large cavities which are found in the sycamore trees, 
clinging to the sides of the hole as close together as 
they can crowd, hanging on with their bill and claws. 
They can scarcely be said to have any nests, their 
eggs being laid upon a few pieces of rotten wood at 
the bottom of the holes in which they roost. 
Alexander Wilson, that accurate and beautiful 
ornithological writer, gives such* an interesting ac- 
count of one of these birds, which he kept for some 
