Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 168, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 August 1917 — Blackbirds of Two Kinds; One Deserves No Quarter, Other Has Good Qualities. [ARTICLE]

Blackbirds of Two Kinds; One Deserves No Quarter, Other Has Good Qualities.

The lark has two sable relatives, very numerous, which have long been of ill repute. One is the grackle, our common big, snaky keel-tailed “blackbird,” and he deserves the black eye he has (actually, by the way, that organ is of a maniacal straw yellow), and his place in the list of birds with-* out protection. He does destroy many bad bugs, especially cutworms and other ground infesting nuisances, but he also punishes the grain, spoils a deal of corn in the milk and systematically raids the nests of his smaller neighbors, the weed seed gleaners and small insect scourges, breaking their eggs and braining their helpless young. So it might be all right to eat grackles if grackles were not decidedly too tough and strong to eat. But the other blackbird, the redwing, that fine steel black march bugler with the orange scarlet epaulettes, can be eaten, can when in autumn be slaughtered wholesale with the spreadIng charge, of a shotgun, and although he ‘too takes some toll of the grain and the corn in ear Investigation has established his overbalancing worth.