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Re: "Rice-birds"?



Bobolinks are "rice birds"

-- Helmut C Mueller

409 Moonridge Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
Phone: 919-942-4937

Permanent email address: hmueller@email.unc.edu


> From: "Ritch Lilly" <scbeachbums@hotmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 08:57:39 -0400
> To: "Carolinabirds" <carolinabirds@duke.edu>
> Subject: "Rice-birds"?
> 
> I met a fellow yesterday at a catfish farm in Dillon County, SC (Thanks
> Steve!).  I told him a was looking for birds.  He told me they often had
> snipe on the property.  He then went on to explain that he would also see
> several hundred "rice-birds" on the power lines each fall over a field of
> sunflowers that he plants every year.  I told him I was unfamiliar with
> "rice-birds".  He gave me a confused look as if to ask, "What kind of birder
> are you anyway if you don't even know a "rice-bird" when you see one?".  He
> said the folks around there had always called them "rice-birds".
> Nevertheless, I asked him several questions about the bird he spoke of yet I
> was able to get little else from him in the way of a description.  He could
> tell me that the bird had "more white on it than the snipe" and that its
> "bib" (bill?) was alot shorter than the snipe's.
> 
> I'm wondering if anyone on the list could enlighten me as to the true
> identity of a "rice-bird".
> 
> Thanks,
> Ritch Lilly
> Myrtle Beach, SC
> scbeachbums@hotmail.com