BOBOLINK, an oriole of the family Icteride, found in plains, prairie-lands, meadows and cultivated fields throughout the entire United States, except on the Pacific coast. The male is 7.7 inches long, its tail taking up fully half of its length. It is distinguished from the blackbirds and other orioles by its pointed tail feathers, long middle toe and variegated plum age. The male has two distinct sets of plumage, a summer or breeding dress, and a winter one. The former dress is lustrous black, with the neck, scapulars, rump and upper tail coverts buff, inclining to ochraceous on the neck, and ashy on the tail; the latter is similar to that of the female, who is protectively clothed in much streaked yellowish-brown neutral tints; the young of both sexes also resemble her, until the young males reach maturity. The gay summer dress of the male, especially the black part, is due to the black margins upon the feathers that come in with the spring renewal of plumage. These edges wear away, and thus, as the season advances, the brownish centres of the feathers are gradually revealed. The song of the male is a varying melody, an incessant outpour of ecstatic music, in which one detects distinctly enunciated the word (bob-o-link.)) Its excited manners are as peculiar as its song, which often bubbles out of its beak as it flutters and dances in mid-air. As the summer advances and the plumage changes, the song diminishes, and finally ceases altogether.
Their nests consist of grasses neatly and skilfully entwined, and ingeniously hidden among the stems and leaves of plants, and are guarded carefully and most jealously by the male, whose exuberant pride in the four or five dull-white, flecked and marbled eggs is remark able. The bobolink goes in summer as far north
as the banks of the Saskatchewan, but is most plentiful in the Northeastern States, where it renders good service by the destruction of in sects and their larva. It begins to migrate southward in August, and assembles in huge flocks in early autumn in the great wild-rice marshes that border Delaware and Chesapeake bays and their rivers, where they fatten on the wild rice, and are shot in vast numbers for market, under the name of Later in the season these birds advance southward and assail the cultivated rice plantations, where they are known as rice-birds and would ruin the crops, partly by eating, but mainly by break ing the stalks and shaking out the grain, were they not constantly killed or scared away by thousands, by men and boys who are employed to shoot them. On their return from the tropics in the spring they also attack the young plants. In consequence of this necessary per secution in the rice fields the species has been seriously diminished of late years, and bobolinks are becoming rare in many parts of the United States and Ontario. On account also of their beauty and powers of song, many are caught, caged and sold in the bird-stores.