ede Ase BYOUN. BU L LE EN 15 
placed at from four inches to two feet above water and is quite deep inside. 
The four to six eggs vary from dull grayish white to pale olive, and are 
thickly speckled with shades of brown or gray, and usually faintly penciled 
and dotted with black or dark brown. 
The yellow-head is considered a noisy bird. Its only notes are hoarse 
chuckles and squeals, all produced as if the effort caused discomfort, if not 
actual pain. Even the ordinary call-note is a hoarse, rattling croak that 
suggests a chronic sore throat. The female’s voice is less harsh, but not 
musical. 
This blackbird is among the birds of doubtful usefulness. Locally its 
numbers are often great and it may at times do considerable harm. How- 
ever, insects harmful to vegetation constitute about thirty percent of its 
food, and are mainly beetles, grasshoppers, and caterpillars. It often eats 
the army worm. 
3. Rusty Blackbird: The Rusty Blackbird is sometimes called the 
Thrush Blackbird, as in flight and shape of bill he somewhat resembles a 
thrush. The male bird in spring has a pale yellow or yellowish-white 
eye. His plumage is a uniform black, faintly glossed with bluish green 
changing to dull violet-bluish on head and neck. At this time the female is 
slate colored. Adults and young in autumn and winter are more or less 
tinged with rusty, closely barred beneath. The female has a broad white 
stripe over the eye. “In fall and winter edges of the feathers are margined 
with brown,” particularly on the female. ‘These edges all wear off during 
the winter, leaving the males blue-black and the females almost as gray as 
Catbirds.” The female rusty is lighter in general coloration than the 
female Brewer’s. 
“The rusty is not so widely known as other blackbirds, as it breeds 
chiefly in rather inaccessible places in the northern United States” and 
particularly in Canada. Its breeding range extends from the limit of 
trees in Canada south to central Ontario and northern New York and 
northern New England. It migrates through the eastern United States to 
the Great Plains; it winters chiefly in southern U. S. east of the plains. 
In summer its range begins where the Brewer’s leaves off, nor is it often 
within the winter range of the Brewer’s. 
In spring the Rusty Blackbirds come north early, ‘often when there is 
still snow on the ground and ice in the edges of the streams.” They are 
“the most nearly aquatic of blackbirds and in spring feed in shallow water, 
where they find insect larvae and probably some small crustaceans or other 
forms of life. At times they wade quite deeply in water, plunging in not 
only their bills but also their whole heads. In autumn they are not so 
closely confined to water and often frequent weedy gardens and cornfields. 
More forest frequenters than most blackbirds, the Rusty Blackbirds may 
be found most often along the swampy borders of woodland lake, swamp, 
or stream.” At night they roost in marshes or in bushes growing about 
open water. 
The Rusty Blackbirds are among the last of their family to go south, 
and sometimes small flocks remain in southern New England well into the 
