Had Robert Louis Stevenson written the biography of a bobolink, he might have given him the names of his immortal Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for the bird seems to possess a dual nature, and to bear totally different reputations in the North and the South. When he visits Canada and northern United States in May, dressed in his gay wedding finery, he is greeted with joy. Few more delightful birds are to be found than this attractive, happy-hearted singer against whom no reproaches are registered in the North.

His song has been a favorite theme for poets and nature-writers. Thoreau wrote: “One or two notes globe themselves and fall in bubbles from his teeming throat. It is as if he touched his harp within a vase of liquid melody, and when he lifted it out, the notes fell like bubbles from the strings. Methinks they are the most liquidly sweet and melodious sounds I ever heard.”[111]

The bobolink’s habits in the North are almost beyond reproach. Professor Beal writes: “In New England there are few birds about which so much romance clusters as this rollicking songster, naturally associated with the 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 extent. They eat a few oats.”[112]

Dr. Henshaw adds: “When the young are well on the wing, they gather in flocks with the parent birds and gradually move southward, being then generally known as reed-birds. They reach the ricefields of the Carolinas about August 20, when the rice is in the milk. Then until the birds depart for South America, planters and birds fight for the crop, and in spite of constant watchfulness and innumerable devices for scaring the birds a loss of 10 per cent. of the rice is the usual result.”[113]

Major Bendire, in his “Life Histories of North American Birds,” quotes a letter from Capt. W. M. Hazzard, a large rice-grower of South Carolina, written concerning the warfare waged against these ricebirds:

“The Bobolinks make their appearance here during the latter part of April. At that season, their plumage is white and black, and they sing merrily when at rest. Their flight is always at night. In the evening there are none. In the morning their appearance is heralded by the popping of whips and firing of musketry by the bird-minders in their efforts to keep the birds from pulling up the young rice. This warfare is kept up incessantly until about the 25th of May, when they suddenly disappear at night. Their next appearance is in a dark yellow plumage, as the Ricebird. There is no song at this time, but instead a chirp which means ruin to any rice found in the milk. My plantation record will show that for the past ten years, except when prevented by stormy south or southwest winds, the Ricebirds have come punctually on the night of the 21st of August, apparently coming from seaward. All night their chirp can be heard passing over our summer homes on South Island, which is situated 6 miles to the east of our rice plantations, in full view of the ocean. Curious to say, we have never seen this flight during the day. During the nights of August 21, 22, 23, and 24, millions of these birds make their appearance and settle in the ricefields. From the 21st of August to the 25th of September our every effort is made to save the crop. Men, boys, and women with guns and ammunition, are posted.... The firing commences at dawn and is kept up till sunset.... If from any cause there is a check to the crop during its growth which prevents the grain from being hard, but in milky condition, the destruction of such fields is complete, it not paying to cut and bring the rice out of the field.... I consider these birds as destructive to rice as the caterpillar is to cotton, with this difference, that these Ricebirds never fail to come.”