14 THE A°U-D'U BOW “BUM Relea 
regarded. However, the Bobolink is said to be of excellent flavor, and 
during the fall migration many are still shot that epicures may have 
their “‘reed-birds on toast.” 
The Bobolink has long been a favorite with authors. Much has been 
written of him both in prose and verse. Lowell, perhaps, has done as well 
as anyone in saying that the bird is “sunshine winged and voiced.” This 
poet continues: 
Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one, 
The Bobolink has come and like the soul 
Of the sweet season vocal in the bird 
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what. 
And also: June’s birdesmaid, poet o’ the year, 
Gladness on wings, the Bobolink is here; 
Half-hid in tip-top apple bloom he sings, 
Or climbs against the breeze with quivering wings, 
Or, giving way to ’t in mock despair, 
Runs down a brook o’ laughter, thro’ the ar. 
Normally the Bobolink is a bird of the river valleys of eastern North 
America, but it breeds from southern Quebec, the Cape Breton Islands 
and New Jersey west to northeastern California. Its range has increased 
greatly with the increase in areas of cultivated land. Within comparatively 
recent years it has extended its range to eastern Washington and British 
Columbia. The birds migrate at night. 
“The Bobolink spends the winter south of the Tropic of Capricorn, in 
southern Brazil and northern Argentina, nearly 5000 miles south of his 
breeding grounds in the northern United States and southern Canada.” 
The Bobolink travels farther than any other member of its family. The 
main migration route is from Florida to Cuba, to Jamaica, and across the 
Caribbean Sea—the ‘Bobolink route.” “It migration exceeds by several 
thousand miles the distance traveled by the Meadowlarks, Cowbirds and the 
various blackbirds, which merely retire to the Southern states or to Mexico, 
and exceeds by over a thousand miles even that of the orioles, which go 
to Central or South America.” (Arthur A. Allen) 
In the meadowlands of my childhood Bobolinks frolicked and sang, 
“my heart remembers how.” 
2. The Cowbird. The North American Cowbird occurs in one or another 
of four forms from southern Canada south through the United States and 
in most of Mexico. It winters in the southern United States and in Mexico. 
The Cowbird is perhaps more despised than any other, for it is the only 
parasite among North American birds. There are species of Cowbirds in 
South America that are partly or wholly parasitic and one that is not 
parasitic at all. This Dr. Herbert Friedmann considers ‘the normal con- 
dition of the Cowbird stock from which the others have departed, losing 
gradually the normal adjustment of the reproductive cycle, until, as in our 
Cowbird, absolute parasitism is reached.” 
