bobolink

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An American migratory songbird (Dolichonyx oryzivorus), the male of which has black, white, and yellowish plumage. Also called reedbird; also called regionally maybird, ricebird.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An American oscine passerine bird, of the family Icteridæ and subfamily Agelœinæ, the Dolichonyx oryzivorus, named from its hearty voluble song in spring. The male is about 7½ inches long, black, with a buff nape, and much white or pale ash on the back and wings; the tail-feathers are very acute. The female is smaller, yellowish, darker above, and streaked. The male wears the black livery only in the breeding season, and is only then in song. He molts in midsummer or in August, acquiring a plumage like that of the female. Both sexes are then known as reed-birds in the Middle States, as rice-birds in the Southern States, and as butter-birds in Jamaica. In the spring the male acquires his black and buff suit without molting any feathers: whence the correct popular notion, based, however, on erroneous premises, that the reed-birds turn into bobolinks in the spring. The bird is abundant in most of the United States, and is a regular migrant, breeding on the ground in meadows in the Northern States and Canada. In the fall, when fat and flocking in the marshes to feed upon wild oats (Zizania), it is much esteemed for the table. Also called bob-lincoln, facetiously Robert of Lincoln (see bob-lincoln), skunk-blackbird, from its coloring, which resembles that of the skunk, and meadowink.

Wiktionary

1. n. An American migratory songbird, Dolichonyx oryzivorus resembling a blackbird with the bill of a finch

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) An American singing bird (Dolichonyx oryzivorus). The male is black and white; the female is brown; -- called also, ricebird, reedbird, and Boblincoln.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. migratory American songbird