 Bobolink, Living in North United States and Canada, a American songbird related to the blackbird and the oriole. Further south is the reed bird and the rice bird .
In the spring plumage of the male is black except for the white shoulders and lower back and has a buff nape. After the breeding season the male assumes yellowish brown streaked plumage like that of the female, and his former voluble singing is reduced to a single call note. Bobolinks winter in South America. In the North they are insectivorous, but as they migrate they gorge on rice in the Eastern wild rice marshes and in cultivated fields in South Carolina and Georgia and become so fat that they are hunted as game birds . The bobolink is the subject of Bryant's poem "Robert of Lincoln" . | 
