Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1885 — The Reed Bird. [ARTICLE]

The Reed Bird.

The reed bird ft the same as the rice bird of the Southern marshes. It feeds there upon rice and takes its local name from that fact. The description of the habits of the bird as given by Mr. Robert Redgway is an interesting one. It appears at different places at different seasons, and receives a different name at each place. It occurs in equal abundance, whenever a suitable food supply is to be found, throughout the country east of the Rocky Mountains, and is therefore not, as many suppose, confined to the Atlantic seacoast The reed bird appears among the Delaware marshes about the middle of August; a week or so later they visit the Potpma cflats, where they linger from about the 20th of August to the last of September or beginning of October, gradually diminishing in numbers toward the last Long before the last- have left the wild rice marshes of the Potomac, others which have gone before have invaded the rice plantations of South Carolina, where they are known as “rice birds.” and in tobe r they move still further southward to their winter home within the tropics. In Jamaica, where they pass th.e winter in large numbers, they feed upon the seeds of the Guinea grass, and become so excessively lat that they are there known as “butter birds.” The greater portion of Sputh America is prpbably included in their winter range, since tile national collection contains, a specimen from Paraguay, while numerous other South American localities have been recorded, the most

remarkable of which, perhaps, is the far off Galapagos Islands, which lie 600 miles from the nearest mainland of Ecuador. Although reed birds remain for several weeks id a given locality, it is by no mean's the same birds which are seen every day. The same individuals do not, ns a rule, remain over a day or two, and those which leave for the South during the one night are replaced next day by fresh ar, ivals from the North, these latter becoming fewer until no more are left to come. It migrates to the North in the summer, and breeds in the northern tier of the United States. It appears here in May, stopping on its way north, but it is not then a reed bird, that is it does not live in the marshes. As there are no seeds to feed upon then it lakes to the fields and meadows, and subsists chiefly, if not exclusively, upon insects. The plumage of the male is ranch gayer, and makes the bird quite conspicuous. On account of its colors the male bird is sometimes known in tho North as the skunk blackbird. It has a white and black plumage. But its most common name is the bobolink. It belongs to the same family as the oriole and red-wing blackbird, and resembles those birds very much.—Boston Cultivator.