“Meanwhile, in southern lowlands the rice-fields, that have been hoed and flooded with water all the season to make the grain grow, are covered with tall stalks of rice, whose grains are not quite ripe, but soft and milky like green corn.

“Some morning there is a great commotion on the plantation.  ’The Ricebirds have come!’ is the cry—­this being only another name for the Bobolink.

“Out fly the field-hands, men, women, and children, waving sticks, blowing horns, and firing off guns, to frighten the invaders away.  Fires are lighted by night to scare them, for the birds travel both night and day.  The Bobolinks do not stop for all this noise, though of course a great many are shot, ending their lives inside a pot-pie, or being roasted in rows of six on a skewer.  But the rest fly on when they are ready, leaving the United States behind them, and go through Florida to Brazil and the West Indies.

“In spring, on the northward journey, the rice-fields suffer again.  The males are jolly minstrels once more, all black, white, and buff, hurrying home to their nesting grounds.  They think that rice newly sown and sprouting is good for the voice, and stop to gobble it up in spite of all objections.

“Their song is not easy to express in words.  ‘Bobolink,’ from which they take their name, is the sound most frequently heard in it; but every bird-lover has tried to give it words, and some have written it down in rhyming nonsense verses, like poetry.  I think Mr. Lowell’s are the best.

“’Ha! ha! ha!  I must have my fun, Miss Silverthimble, thimble, thimble, if I break every heart in the meadow.  See! see! see!’ is one translation.”

“That does sound exactly like a Bobolink,” laughed Dodo; “and here is one now, right over in that tree, so crazy to sing that he doesn’t mind us a bit.”

“Kick your slipper!  Kick your slipper!  Temperance!  Temperance!” said Bob, as the white horses turned into the road again.  “Temperance! take a drink! go to grass, all of you!”

The Bobolink.

Length about seven inches.

Male in spring and summer:  jet black with ashy-white rump and shoulders; some light edgings on the back, wings, and tail-feathers, and a buff patch on the back of the neck, like a cream-puff baked just right.

Female:  brownish and streaky like a big Sparrow, with sharp-pointed tail-feathers; two dark-brown stripes on the crown.  Brown above, with some black and yellowish streaks.  Plain yellowish below.

In autumn and winter both sexes alike.

A Summer Citizen of the northern United States and southern Canada.  Visits all the Southern States in its journeys, but winters south of them.

A member of the guilds of Ground Gleaners and Tree Trappers, and a good Citizen in its nesting haunts.  But on its travels through the South a mischievous bird, who eats sprouting rice in spring and ripening rice grains in fall.