# The New International Encyclopædia/Bobolink

Edition of 1905. See also Bobolink on Wikipedia; and the disclaimer.
​BOBOLINK (earlier boblincoln, Bob o' Lincoln, bob-o-lincon; in imitation of the sounds produced by the bird). One of the most conspicuous and interesting song-birds of North America, found wherever plains, prairie meadows, or cultivated fields offer it a suitable home. It is a member of the Icteridæ, but stands apart from the orioles and blackbirds by reason of its pointed tail-feathers and long middle toe, as Dolichonyx oryzivorus. The length is about 7 inches, of which 2¾ inches go to the tail; the HEAD AND FOOT OF BOBOLINK Male in summer plumage spring or breeding plumage of the adult male is black, with the hindhead and nape, scapulars, rump, and upper tail-coverts buff, inclining to ochraceous on the neck and ashy toward the tail; in this plumage a popular local name is skunk-blackbird. The female is protectively denied this gay suit, and is clothed in neutral yellowish brown, much streaked; and the young of both sexes wear a similar dress until the males mature. (See Plate of Blackbirds.) Over the region of the dry Western plains and mountains, as far as the Salt Lake Valley, a paler form prevails, distinguished as variety albinucha. Such is the early summer gayety of plumage, when the males are rollicking above the fields where they are breeding in the Northern States and southern Canada, few stopping for that purpose south of latitude 40°. For their nests they choose open grassy spaces or fields of cultivated grass and grain; and as the spreading cultivation of the country has multiplied these conditions they have dispersed much more widely, especially in the East, than they originally extended, and for a long time vastly increased in numbers. Arriving from the South in May, a pair take possession of a field. The female constructs on the ground a nest of grasses skillfully entwined and often ingeniously hidden among the stems of the growing plants, in which are laid four or five eggs (for description of birds' eggs, see Egg), dull white, flecked and marbled with Vandyke brown, upon which she sits very closely for about a fortnight.
During this nuptial season — from their first arrival until mid-july — the male is driving from the vicinity every intruder he can frighten away, especially rivals of his own kind, and making himself delightfully conspicuous by his gay activity upon the wing, and his loud, sprightly, and unceasing song, which has a peculiar ringing or chinking quality adapted to a rattling melody, ​seemingly uttered in an ecstasy too vivid to permit of any tune or modulation. It is to this the bird owes its name, which the poets have turned to Bob-o'-Lincoln, and played upon in many verses. As summer advances the black of the plumage of the male, which in reality is formed only by the tips of feathers, begins to wear off (see Molting), leaving the males in a rusty garb, which later becomes scarcely distinguishable from that of the females and young. Their brilliant song dwindles to the call-note, Chink! and in August the males gather upon marshy meadows in vast flocks, where they are gradually joined and followed by their families, and the southward migration begins. By the end of September all the bobolinks have left the northerly parts of the country, and are gathered upon southerly seacoasts or inland marshes. At this time they are fat, and along Chesapeake Bay and the Southern ‘sounds’ are shot in immense numbers under the name reed-birds as an autumn delicacy. Such as escape move on southward, where enormous flocks fall upon the ripening ricefields of Carolina and the Gulf coast, where they are called rice-birds. Here they do very serious damage by eating the rice-grains, and more by shaking down a vast quantity, and armies of boys are set to shoot or drive them off — a process in which a great number of other quite innocent birds are also destroyed. So systematic and severe has been this persecution of late years that the species has been seriously diminished, and bobolinks are becoming rare in many parts of the northeastern United States and Ontario, to the sorrow of the people, who everywhere rejoice in the presence of this merry-andrew of the meadows.