338 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



from Lake Ontario to the sea ; in all of which places, north of 

 Pennsylvania, they remain during the summer, building, and rear- 

 ing their young. The nest is fixed in the ground, generally in a 

 field of grass : the outside is composed of dry leaves and coarse 

 grass ; the inside is lined with fine stalks of the same, laid in con- 

 siderable quantity. The female lays five eggs of a bluish-white, 

 marked with numerous irregular spots of blackish-brown. The 

 song of the male, while the female is sitting, is singular, and very 

 agreeable. Mounting and hovering on wing at a small height 

 above the field, he chants out such a jingling medley of short, 

 variable notes, uttered with such seeming confusion and rapidity, 

 and continued for a considerable time, that it appears as if half a 

 dozen birds of different kinds were all singing together. Some 

 idea may be formed of this song by striking the high keys of a 

 piano-forte at random singly and quickly, making as many sudden 

 contrasts of high and low notes as possible. Many of the tones 

 are, in themselves, charming ; but they succeed each other so rap- 

 idly that the ear can hardly separate them. Nevertheless, the 

 general effect is good ; and, when ten or twelve are all singing on 

 the same tree, the concert is singularly pleasing. I kept one of 

 these birds for a long time, to observe its change of color. During 

 the whole of April, May, and June, it sang almost continually. 

 In the month of June, the color of the male begins to change, 

 gradually assimilating to that of the female ; and, before the 

 beginning of August, it is difficult to distinguish the one from 

 the other. At this time, also, the young birds are so much like 

 the female, or rather like both parents, and the males so different 

 in appearance from what they were in spring, that thousands of 

 people in Pennsylvania, to this day, persist in believing them to 

 be a different sjjecies altogether ; while others allow them, indeed, 

 to be the same, but confidently assert that they are all females, — 

 none but females, according to them, returning in the fall : what 

 becomes of the males they are totally at a loss to conceive. Even 

 Mr. Mark Catesby, who resided for years in the country they 

 inhabit, and who, as he himself informs us, examined, by dissec- 

 tion, great numbers of them in the fall, and repeated his experi- 

 ment the succeeding year, lest he should have been mistaken, 

 declares that he uniformly found them to be females. These 



