[Illustration: Fig. 15.--Bobolink, ricebird, or reed bird. Length, about
7 inches.]
The bobolink, ricebird, or reedbird[43] (fig. 15) is a common summer
resident of the United States, north of about latitude 40°, and from
New England westward to the Great Plains, wintering beyond our southern
border. In New England there are few birds about which so much romance
clusters as this rollicking songster, naturally associated with sunny
June meadows; but in the South there are none on whose head so many
maledictions have been heaped on account of its fondness for rice. During
its sojourn in the Northern States it feeds mainly upon insects and seeds
of useless plants; but while rearing its young, insects constitute its
chief food, and almost the exclusive diet of its brood. After the young
are able to fly, the whole family gathers into a small flock and begins
to live almost entirely upon vegetable food. This consists for the most
part of weed seeds, since In the North these birds do not appear to
attack grain to any great extent. They eat a few oats, but their stomachs
do not reveal a great quantity of this or any other grain. As the season
advances they gather into larger flocks and move southward, until by the
end of August nearly all have left their breeding grounds. On their way
they frequent the reedy marshes about the mouths of rivers and on the
inland waters of the coast region and subsist largely upon wild rice. In
the Middle States, during their southward migration, they are commonly
known as reedbirds, and, becoming very fat, are treated as game.
[43] _Dolichonyx oryzivorus_.
Formerly, when the low marshy shores of the Carolinas and some of the
more southern States were devoted to rice culture the bobolinks made
great havoc both upon the sprouting rice in spring and upon the ripening
grain on their return migration in the fall. While the damage is not
so great as when this region was the center of rice production, still
it amounts to many thousands of dollars annually. As a remedy, an open
season on ricebirds was provided in the Coast States from New Jersey to
Florida.