40 
THE MUSEUM. 
Grakles. —Crow-blackbirds are both mi¬ 
gratory and resident; for never a winter passes 
that a few are not seen along the river shore. 
Indeed, when the usual January thaw arrives, 
quite a host of them are to be found feeding 
on the mud-flats, when these are not covered 
with ice. A limited number of hardy indi¬ 
viduals, finding sufficient food, prefer the dis¬ 
comforts of remaining throughout winter, to 
the exertion of migration, and so tarry with us 
the year through.The nest is usually 
a bulky and strongly built structure, every 
twig and blade of grass being well inter¬ 
twined with the others; but there is one very 
prevalent defect in the architecture of these 
nests : They are insecurely anchored to the 
supporting branches of the tree. One such 
nest, that fell late in the summer, I took pains 
to unravel, twig by twig. It was a tedious 
task. There were four hundred and eighty- 
two twigs, and two hundred and four blades of 
grass, used as a lining. With these were bits 
of inner bark of certain plants, a number of 
chicken feathers, and a long, black shoe-lace. 
The eggs once hatched, something like 
work commences. From early morning until 
late in the evening, so long, indeed, as there 
is sufficient light to enable them to see a worm, 
the male bird, for the first week, and then both 
parents, hunt for and carry to the five hungry 
infants their food. To get an approximate 
idea of the amount of food required to 
keep these young birds in growing condition, 
I timed the movements of a pair. I chose 
the hours from io to n a. m., and 2 to 3 p. m. 
In these hours each bird made thirteen trips 
to and fro, carrying, in every case, a worm, 
larva or large insect—living animal food in 
every instance. The five young birds were sup¬ 
plied, therefore, at a rate nearly equal to every 
other minute ; but as there were five of them, 
each bird got a “ square meal ” at least once in 
every ten minutes. This feeding was kept up 
for nearly ten hours of each day, there being 
less activity in the matter toward evening, 
when the parent birds were probably taking 
their own meals; but at this rate, it is a matter 
of two hundred and sixty worms a day, or 
fifty-two for each young bird every twenty- 
four hours. What digestion ! Of course this 
must be active, and the fact is evident, as in 
every departure from the nest ejecta are car¬ 
ried away in the beaks of the parent birds, 
and dropped, often at a distance of a hundred 
yards from the nesting tree. 
The young birds are twenty-five days old 
when they leave the nest and are supposed to 
shift for themselves. In the meantime each 
has been supplied with fifty-two worms a day, 
or thirteen hundred during its life in the nest; 
and the five collectively have consumed sixty- 
five hundred worms, larvae or insects. But 
there were eleven of these nests, which, 
therefore, means the destruction of seventy- 
one thousand five hundred worms or insects. 
Again, seven pairs of the colony of twenty- 
two birds raised a second brood, which 
means a further check upon insect life of some 
forty-five thousand five hundred more worms 
and grubs, or a total of one hundred and 
seventeen thousand of insect life in larval 
or mature state. The food of the parent birds 
has not been considered in the above calcula¬ 
tions ; this added, and we have a grand total 
of about one hundred and fifty thousand forms 
6f insect life destroyed, all of which would 
have proved more or less destructive to the 
growing crops .—From Dr. CharlesC. Abbott's 
forthcoming book , “ Upland and Meadow .” 
Early Risers Among Birds. —While re¬ 
covering from an attack of typhoid pneumonia 
in June, 1878, sleep being banished from my 
eyelids by the ennui incident to a protracted 
illness of some two months, I frequently spent 
the early morning hours in listening to the 
delightful strains of music which the breezes 
bore to my bedside through the partially 
open windows. Noticing that the same feath¬ 
ered choristers were, by some good genius, 
thus made to contribute to my pleasure and 
happiness by drawing my thoughts from self 
and fixing them on the outer world, and ob¬ 
serving that these entertainments were given 
singly and at about the same hour of the day, 
I arranged with my wife that the timepiece 
should be so situated with respect to the 
burning lamp that I could plainly see the 
