Conspicuously Black 
complain, too, that the blackbirds eat their corn, forgetting that 
having devoured innumerable grubs from it during the summer, 
the birds feel justly entitled to a share of the profits. Though 
occasionally guilty of eating the farmer’s corn and oats and rice, 
yet it has been found that nearly seven-eighths of the red- 
wing’s food is made up of weed-seeds or of insects injurious to 
agriculture. 
This bird builds its nest in low bushes on the margin of 
ponds or low in the bog grass of marshes. From three to five 
pale-blue eggs, curiously streaked, spotted, and scrawled with 
black or purple, constitute a brood. Nursery duties are soon 
finished, for in July the young birds are ready to gather in flocks 
with their elders. 
“ The blackbirds make the maples ring 
With social cheer and jubilee ; 
The red-wing flutes his ‘ O-ka-lee ! ’ ” 
— Emerson. 
Purple Martin 
( Progne subis ) Swallow family 
Length — 7 to 8 inches. Two or three inches smaller than the 
robin. 
Male — Rich glossy black with bluish and purple reflections ; 
duller black on wings and tail. Wings rather longer than 
the tail, which is forked. 
Female — More brownish and mottled ; grayish below. 
Range — Peculiar to America. Penetrates from Arctic Circle to 
South America. 
Migrations — Late April. Early September. Summer resident. 
In old-fashioned gardens, set on a pole over which honey- 
suckle and roses climbed from a bed where China pinks, phlox, 
sweet Williams, and hollyhocks crowded each other below, 
martin boxes used always to be seen with a pair of these large, 
beautiful swallows circling overhead. But now, alas! the boxes, 
where set up at all, are quickly monopolized by the English 
sparrow — the one bird that the martin, courageous as a kingbird 
in attacking crows and hawks— cannot withstand. 
Bradford Torrey tells of seeing quantities of long-necked 
squashes dangling from poles about the negro cabins all through 
