THE SNOW-BIRD. 83 



turb this kind of treasure. When startled from her nest 

 the female is much excited, hobbling along on the ground as 

 if lame or leg-broken, her wide-spread tail showing the white 

 feathers on either side — the mark of relationship to the 

 Bay-wing — to the best advantage. Hopping about the 

 nearest stump or fence-rail, in the most uneasy manner, 

 she is joined immediately by her darker mate, in her sharp 

 cJiip-cJiip-chip-chip-chippiiig^ and again takes possession of the 

 nest as soon as the intruder leaves. The chipping note of 

 this bird is so much like that of the Chipping Sparrow 

 {Spizelia socialis) that Wilson found many persons in New 

 England and some in New York State who believed that 

 the former turned into the latter in summer, and it was most 

 difficult to remove the erroneous notion. 



Resembling the Song Sparrow in size and general habit, 

 the Snow-bird differs widely from it, not only in color, but 

 in its song, which is a prolonged tintinnabulous twitter — a 

 more musical rendering of the monotonous strokes in the 

 plain melody of the Chipping Sparrow. Sometimes, how- 

 ever, one may surprise it in a soft, low warble, as if indulg- 

 ing in a musical soliloqu}^ 



Though belonging to the Fringillidce^ or seed-eating family, 

 it is, in summer at least, particularly insectivorous, completely 

 crowding its mouth with soft, writhing larvae for its young. 



Audubon gave the Alleghany Mountain range as the breed- 

 ing habitat of this bird, and did not see it in Labrador. 

 Minot reports it breeding in the White Mountains early in 

 June, and sometimes again in July. Augustus H. Wood, 

 an ornithologist residing at Painted Post, N. Y., reports it 

 breeding commonly in his neighborhood, in damp situations 

 in ravines of hemlock woods. I have myself seen the 

 female, on the Tth of June, her mouth crammed with larv^ae, 

 in Tonawanda Swamp, in Orleans County, N. Y. Dr. Coues 



