. Our own birds : a familiar natural history of the birds of the United States . should settle upon a piece of fresh-ploughed groundwhere there is no crop to suffer from their depreda-tions, but little notice is taken of it, when perhapsthey may be rendering us signal service. So foryears the poor Red-wings have suffered from the un * Letter from Dr. T. M. Brewer, of Boston, to J. J. Au^dubon. 4 88 INSES SORES. just conclusions which we had drawn in reterence totheir real merits. Every farmer knows that fresh spring ploughingturns up an army of grubs, worms, and the larvae ofmyriads of insects
. Our own birds : a familiar natural history of the birds of the United States . should settle upon a piece of fresh-ploughed groundwhere there is no crop to suffer from their depreda-tions, but little notice is taken of it, when perhapsthey may be rendering us signal service. So foryears the poor Red-wings have suffered from the un * Letter from Dr. T. M. Brewer, of Boston, to J. J. Au^dubon. 4 88 INSES SORES. just conclusions which we had drawn in reterence totheir real merits. Every farmer knows that fresh spring ploughingturns up an army of grubs, worms, and the larvae ofmyriads of insects, which, if left to themselves, wouldbe sufficient to destroy a large portion of the cropwhich the ground would produce. But just at thistime come the immense flocks of Iled-wino-s and o Purple Grakles, which have been equally objects ofthe farmers aversion, and as they subsist almost ex-clusively upon this kind of food, they resort at onceto the open fields and cultivated grounds, where theyfully compensate the farmer for the few ears of cornwhich they destroy in the Red-winged Blackbird. The Red-winged Blackbird generally selects fora breeding place a low marshy piece of ground, oc-casionally interspersed with clumps of alder andother bushes, among which or in a tall tussuck of THE RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD. 89 grass lie builds his nest, composed of a mass of dryweeds or some other material for an exterior, andlined with fine grass or horse-hair. The female layafrom four to six eggs of a light blue color, slightlyspotted with brown. It is after the second brood isfully fledged that these birds congregate in such vastnumbers, and commence their depredations upon thegrowing corn, which, being still young and tender,attracts them in such numbers as to darken the airand fairly to blacken the spot upon which they such times scare-crows avail little to protect thegrain, and even the report of a gun will but drivethem from one part of the field to another. This,however
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1879
