THE INDIGO-BIRD. 831 



Female. — Brown above; whitish, obscurely streaked or blotched with brownish- 

 j"ellow beneath; immature males similar, variously blotched with blue. 



Length, about five and seventy-five one-hundredths inches ; wing, nearly three 

 inches. 



Hab. — Eastern United States to the Missouri, south to Guatemala. 



This beaiitiful species is pretty generally distributed 

 throughout New England as a summer visitor, and is rather 

 common in thickly settled districts. It arrives from the 

 south about the 10th of May, and soon mates and selects its 

 home for the ensuing summer. Says Nuttall, — 



" Though naturally shy, active, and suspicious, they still, at this 

 interesting period of procreation, resort chiefly to the precincts of 

 habitations, around which they are far more common than in the 

 solitary woods, seeking their borders, or the thickets by the sides of 

 the road ; but their favorite resort is the garden, where, from the 

 topmost bough of some tall tree, which commands the whole wide 

 landscape, the male regularly pours out his lively chant, and 

 continues it for a considerable length of time. Nor is this song 

 confined to the cool and animating dawn of morning; but it is 

 renewed and still more vigorous during the noonday heat of sum- 

 mer. This lively strain seems composed of a repetition of short 

 notes, commencing loud and rapid, and then, slowly foiling, they 

 descend almost to a whisper, succeeded by a silent interval of about 

 half a minute, when the song is again continued as before. The 

 most common of these vocal expressions sounds like, tshe tshe 

 tshe — tshe tshee tshee — tshe tshe tshe. The middle syllables are 

 uttered lispingly in a very peculiar manner, and the three last 

 gradually fall: sometimes it is varied and shortened into tshea 

 tshea tshea tshreh, the last sound being sometimes doubled. This 

 shorter song is usually uttered at the time that the female is 

 engaged in the cares of incubation, or as the brood already appear, 

 and when too great a display of his music might endanger the 

 retiring security of his family." 



The Indigo-bird commences building about the last of 

 May. The nest is usually placed in low bushes, often 

 bramble and brier bushes, usually near houses and gar- 

 dens : it is constructed of coarse sedge grass, some withered 



