pace of four months by this single species!
The combined ravages of such a hideous host of vermin would be
sufficient to spread famine and desolation over a wide extent of the
richest, best-cultivated country on the earth."

The yellow-headed blackbird belongs properly north-west of Lake
Superior, but frequently gets into Michigan and Illinois. The bright
yellow head and neck make it very noticeable if seen. Its habits are
essentially those of the red-wing.

We have another set of blackbirds of greater size, commonly known as
"crow" blackbirds, but which in the books are called grakles. There are
several species, but none are greatly different from that too-common
pest of our cornfields,

THE PURPLE GRAKLE.

The real home of the grakles is along the edges of the swamps--not among
the reeds where the red-wing and bobolink sit and swing, but rather in
the bushes and trees skirting the muddy shores. They build their nests
in a variety of positions, but usually a convenient fork in an
alder-bush is chosen, twenty or thirty pairs often nesting within a
radius of a hundred feet. The nest is a rude, strong affair of sticks
and coarse grass-stalks lined with finer grass, and looks very bulky and
rough beside the neat structure of the red-wing; which illustrates how
much better a result can be produced by an artistic use of the same
material. In the case of both these birds, however, the female does not
wear the jetty, iridescent coat which adorns the head of the family and
reflects the sunlight in a thousand prismatic tints, but hides herself
and the home she cares for by affecting a dull, brown-black, streaked
suit, assimilating her closely with the surrounding objects. This
protective coloration of plumage is possessed by the females of many
species of birds, which would be very conspicuous, and of course greatly
liable to danger while incubating their eggs, if they wore the bright
tints of the males. The tanager and indigo-bird afford prominent
examples. Sometimes the crow blackbirds make their homes at a distance
from the water, and occasionally they choose odd places, such as the
tops of tall pine trees, the spires of churches, martin-boxes in gardens
and holes in trees. The latter situation is one which the bronzed
blackbird of the Mississippi Valley (var. _AEneus_) especially makes use
of.

Grakles' eggs are among the first on every boy's string, and until he
gains experience the young collector supposes he has a