COMMON CROW-BLACKBIRD. 
195 
the middle of November. Thus assembled from the north 
and west in increasing numbers, they wholly overrun, at 
times the warmer maritime regions, where they assemble 
to pass the winter in the company of their well known 
cousins the Red-winged Troopials or Blackbirds ; for 
both impelled by the same predatory appetite, and love 
of comfortable winter quarters, are often thus accidental- 
ly associated in the plundering and gleaning of the plan- 
tations. The amazing numbers in which the present 
species associate are almost incredible. Wilson relates 
that on the 20th of January, a few miles from the banks 
of the Roanoke in Virginia, he met with one of those 
prodigious armies of Blackbirds, which, as he approach- 
ed, rose from the surrounding fields with a noise like 
thunder, and descending on the stretch of road before 
him, covered it and the fences completely with black ; 
rising again, after a few evolutions, they descended 
on the skirt of a leafless wood, so thick as to give the 
whole forest, for a considerable extent, the appearance of 
being shrouded in mourning, the numbers amounting 
probably to many hundreds of thousands. Their notes 
and screams resembled the distant sound of a mighty 
cataract, but strangely attuned into a musical cadence, 
which rose and fell with the fluctuation of the breeze, like 
the magic harp of JEolus. 
Their depredations on the maize crop or Indian corn 
commence almost with the planting. The infant 
blades no sooner appear than they are hailed by the 
greedy Blackbird as the signal for a feast ; and, without 
hesitation, they descend on the fields, and regale them- 
selves with the sweet and sprouted seed, rejecting and 
scattering the blades around as an evidence of their mis- 
chief and audacity. Again, about the beginning of Au- 
gust, while the grain is in the milky state, their attacks 
