The bobolink, rice bird, or reed bird[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 reed birds, and becoming very fat are treated as game.

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. With a change in the rice-raising districts, however, this damage is no longer done.