We have another set of blackbirds of greater size, commonly known as "crow" blackbirds, but which in the books are called grakles. There are several species, but none are greatly different from that too-common pest of our cornfields, THE PURPLE GRAKLE. The real home of the grakles is along the edges of the swamps--not among the reeds where the red-wing and bobolink sit and swing, but rather in the bushes and trees skirting the muddy shores. They build their nests in a variety of positions, but usually a convenient fork in an alder-bush is chosen, twenty or thirty pairs often nesting within a radius of a hundred feet. The nest is a rude, strong affair of sticks and coarse grass-stalks lined with finer grass, and looks very bulky and rough beside the neat structure of the red-wing; which illustrates how much better a result can be produced by an artistic use of the same material. In the case of both these birds, however, the female does not wear the jetty, iridescent coat which adorns the head of the family and reflects the sunlight in a thousand prismatic tints, but hides herself and the home she cares for by affecting a dull, brown-black, streaked suit, assimilating her closely with the surrounding objects. This protective coloration of plumage is possessed by the females of many species of birds, which would be very conspicuous, and of course greatly liable to danger while incubating their eggs, if they wore the bright tints of the males. The tanager and indigo-bird afford prominent examples. Sometimes the crow blackbirds make their homes at a distance from the water, and occasionally they choose odd places, such as the tops of tall pine trees, the spires of churches, martin-boxes in gardens and holes in trees. The latter situation is one which the bronzed blackbird of the Mississippi Valley (var. _AEneus_) especially makes use of. Grakles' eggs are among the first on every boy's string, and until he gains experience the young collector supposes he has almost as many different species represented as he has specimens, so much do they differ, even in the same nestful, in respect to color, shape and size. Their length averages about 1.25 by .90 of an inch, but some are long, slender and pointed, while others are round, fat, and blunt at both ends. The ground color may be any shade of dirty white, light blue, greenish or olive brown; the markings consist of sharply-defined spots and confused blotches, scratches and straggling lines of obscure colors, from blue-black to lilac and rusty brown--sometimes scantily and prettily marbled upon the surface of the egg, and sometimes painted on so thick as to wholly conceal the ground color.