PURPLE GRAKLE. 
229 
fare. I have seen fields of com of many acres, where 
more than one-half was thus ruined. Indeed the 
farmers in the immediate vicinity of the rivers Dela- 
ware 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 of 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, I 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, and when they again rose, and, 
after a few evolutions, descended on the skirts of the 
high timbered woods, at that time destitute of leaves, 
they produced a most singular and striking effect ; the 
whole trees for a considerable extent, from the top to 
the lowest branches, seeming as if hung in mourning; 
their notes and screaming the meanwhile resembling 
the distant sound of a great cataract, but in more 
musical cadence, swelling and dying away on the ear, 
according to the fluctuation of the breeze. In Kentucky, 
and all along the Mississippi, from its juncture with the 
Ohio to the Balize, I found numbers of these birds, so 
that the purple grakle may be considered as a very 
general inhabitant of the territory of the United States. 
Every industrious farmer complains of the mischief 
committed on his corn by the crow blackbirds , as they 
are usually called ; though, were the same means used, 
