236 NOTES ON THE 



ric-ah, hurric ah, repeated all the way from two or three, to 

 seven or eight times in rather deliberate succession. But their 

 common habits are too well known to require, or justify an 

 attempt to describe them in a report which aims principally to 

 establish identity, and characteristic local habits, more especi 

 ally of less familiar species. 



Sometimes they levy a modest toll upon the shocks and 

 stacks of the farmer, and thus come under the shadow of his 

 anathemas, but their destruction of insects and worms is too 

 invaluable to bring them absolutely under his proscription. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Shafts, under surfaces of wings, and tail feathers, gamboge- 

 yellow; a black patch on each cheek; a red crescent on the 

 nape; throat, and stripe beneath the eye, pale lilac brown; 

 back glossed with olivaceous green; a crescentic patch on the 

 breast, and rounded spots on the belly, black; back and wing 

 coverts with interrupted transverse bands of black; neck above 

 and sides ashy; bill slender, depressed at base, compressed; 

 culmen much curved; pointed, but not truncate; nostrils basal, 

 medium, oval, exposed; feet large; tail long, exceeding the 

 secondaries, feathers acuminate. 



Length, 12.50; wing, 6. 



Habitat, northern and eastern North America, west to the 

 eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and Alaska. Occasional 

 on the Pacific slope from California northward. 



