Page:Ornithological biography, or an account of the habits of the birds of the United States of America, vol 2.djvu/540



This elegant bird is an inhabitant of the Southern States, to the ma- ritime portions of which it is more particularly attached. Indeed, it sel- dom goes farther inland than forty or fifty miles, and even then follows the swampy margins of large rivers, as the Mississippi, the Santee, the St John's, and the Savannah. It is found in Lower Louisiana, but never ascends so far as the city of Natchez, and it abounds in the south-eastern low grounds of the Floridas, and in those of Georgia and South Carolina, as well as in the sea islands of the Atlantic coasts, as far north as Carolina, beyond which none are to be seen.

The Boat-tailed Grakles are gregarious at all seasons of the year, and frequently assemble in very large flocks, which, however, cannot be com- pared with those of the Purple Grakle, or of the Red-winged Starling. They seek for their food amid the large salt marshes, and along their muddy shores, and throw themselves into the rice plantations as soon as the grain is fit for being eaten by them. In autumn they resort not un- frequently to corn fields, and the ploughed lands of the plantations, inter- spersed with ponds or marshy places, retiring towards evening to the salt marshes, where they roost in immense flocks amid the tall marsh grass {Spartina glabra), from which their cries are heard until darkness comes on.

The food of this species consists principally of those small crabs called "fiddlers," of which millions are found along the margins of the rivers and mud-flats, as well as of large insects of all kinds, ground-worms, and seeds, especially grain. They frequently seize on shrimps, and other aquatic animals of a similar nature, that have been detained at low water on the banks of racoon oysters, a kind of shell-fish so named under the idea that they are eaten by that quadruped. In autumn, while the rice is yet in the stack, they commit considerable mischief by feeding on the grain, although not so much as when it is in a juicy state, when the planters are obliged to employ persons to chase them from the fields.