In Southern Illinois, as Mr. Ridgway informs me, these birds are resident throughout the year, though rather rare during the winter months. They breed in the greatest abundance, and are very gregarious in the breeding-season. On a single small island in the Wabash River, covered with tall willows, Mr. Ridgway found over seventy nests at one time. These were placed indifferently on horizontal boughs, in forks, or in excavations,—either natural or made by the large Woodpeckers (Hylotomus),—nests in all these situations being sometimes found in one tree. They prefer the large elms, cottonwoods, and sycamores of the river-bottoms as trees for nesting-places, but select rather thinly wooded situations, as old clearings, etc. In the vicinity of Calais, according to Mr. Boardman, they nest habitually in hollow stubs in marshy borders of brooks or ponds.
FLORIDA GRAKLE.
Quiscalus baritus, Baird, Birds N. Am. 1858, 556, pl. xxxii (not of Linn.). Quiscalus aglæus, Baird, Am. Jour. Sci. 1866, 84.—Cassin, Pr. A. N. S. 1866, 44.—Ridgway, Pr. A. N. S. 1869, 135. Q. purpureus, Allen, B. E. Fla. 291.
Var. aglæus.
Sp. Char. Length, 10.60; wing, 5.20; tail, 5.12; culmen, 1.40; tarsus, 1.40. Second and third quills equal and longest; first shorter than fourth; projection of primaries beyond secondaries, 1.12; graduation of tail, 1.00.
Bill very slender and elongated, the tip of upper mandible abruptly decurved; commissure very regular.
Metallic tints very dark. Head and neck all round well defined violaceous steel-blue, the head most bluish, the neck more purplish and with a bronzy cast in front; body uniform soft, dull, bronzy greenish-black, scarcely lustrous; wings, upper tail-coverts, and tail blackish steel-blue, the wing-coverts tipped with vivid violet-bronze; belly and crissum glossed with blue.
Hab. South Florida.