THE BOBOLINK. 
25 
flew by in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how 
I envied him! No lessons, no task, no hateful school; nothing but holiday, 
frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Further observation and experience 
have given me a different idea of this little feathered voluptuary, which I 
will venture to impart for the benefit of my school-boy readers, who may 
regard him with the same unqualified envy and admiration which I once in¬ 
dulged. I have shown him only as I saw him at first, in what I may call 
the poetic part of his career, when he in a manner devoted himself to elegant 
pursuits and enjoyments, and was a bird of music, and song, and faste, and 
sensibility, and refinement. While this lasted he was sacred from injury; 
the very school-boy would not fling a stone at him, and the merest rustic 
would pause to listen to his strain. But mark the difference. As the year 
advances, as the clover blossoms disappear, and the spring fades into sum¬ 
mer, he gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical 
suit of black, assumes a russet, dusky garb, and sinks to the gross enjoy¬ 
ments of common, vulgar birds. His notes no longer vibrate on the ear ; 
he is stuffing himself with the seeds of the tall weeds, on which he lately 
swung and chanted so melodiously. He has become a ‘bon vivant,’ a 
‘gourmand;’ with him now there is nothing like the ‘joys of the table.’ 
In a little while he grows tired of plain, homely fare, and is off on a gastro- 
nomical tour in quest of foreign luxuries. We next hear of him, with my¬ 
riads of his kind, banqueting among the reeds of the Delaware, and grown 
corpulent with good feeding. He has changed his name in travelling: Bob- 
lincon no more, he is the Reed-bird now, the much sought for tidbit of Penn¬ 
sylvania epicures; the rival in unlucky fame of the ortolan! Wherever he 
goes, pop ! pop ! pop ! every rusty firelock in the country is blazing away. 
He sees his companions falling by thousands around him. 
“ Does he take warning, and reform ? Alas, not he ! Incorrigible epi¬ 
cure ! again he wings his flight. The rice-swamps of the South invite him. 
He gorges himself among them almost to bursting; he can scarcely fly for 
corpulency. He has once more changed his name, and is now the famous 
Rice-bird of the Carolinas. 
“ Last stage of his career; behold him spitted with dozens of his corpu¬ 
lent companions, and served up a vaunted dish outlie table of some Southern 
gastronome. 
“ Such is the story of the bobolink; once spiritual, musical, admired, the 
joy of the meadows, and the favorite bird of spring; finally, a gross little 
sensualist, who expiates his sensuality in the larder. His story contains a 
moral worthy the attention of all little birds and little boys, warning them 
to keep to those refined and intellectual pursuits which raised him to so 
high a pitch of popularity during the early part of his career; but to eschew 
all tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence which brought this 
mistaken little bird to an untimely end.” 
The bobolink is black; head and rump white, tinged with yellow. They 
feed upon crickets, grasshoppers, spiders, and seeds of various kinds. 
2 
