38 



BIRDS OF AMERICA 



a line or narrow stripe of white; a broad stripe over 

 eye, br'ujht yellow anti-riorly if nun lull to above eyes), 

 white posteriorly; a broad streak of black behind eye; 

 ear and under eye regions, plain gray; a conspicuous 

 li'liite patch covering chin, upper throat, and greater 

 part of cheek region; this white patch abruptly defined 

 below against the gray of lower throat and chest, 

 which passes into a more brownish hue on sides and 

 flanks, the latter streaked with grayish-brown; breast, 

 abdomen, and under tail-coverts, white ; back and 

 shoulders, rusty-brown streaked with black; rump and 

 upper tail-coverts, light olive or hair-brown ; tail, 

 deeper hair-brown edged with paler ; middle and 

 greater wing-coverts, tipped with whitish forming two 

 narrow bands; primaries, primary coverts, and outer- 

 most greater coverts, edged with lighter and more 



grayish-brown ; the edge of wing, pale yellow ; iris, 

 brown. 



Nest and Eggs. — Nest : Typical site on ground, 

 in burnt-over clearings of coniferous forests ; some- 

 times in low bushes near streams or borders of fresh- 

 water swamps, in the evergreen woods ; a rather bulky 

 structure, of coarse grasses, strips of bark, moss, lined 

 with fine blades of grass. Eggs; 4 or 5, minutely and 

 evenly sprinkled or heavily blotched with dark brown 

 on a pale greenish or pale buffy ground. 



Distribution. — Eastern North -America ; breeding 

 from Massachusetts, northern New York, Ontario, 

 northern Michigan, nortlieastern Wyoming, eastern 

 Alontana, etc., northward to Great Bear Lake, west 

 shores of Hudson Bay, Labrador, etc.; south in winter 

 to Florida and southern Te.xas 



Tliis is not only one of the handsomest of the 

 Sparrows ; it is perhaps the sweetest singer of 

 them all. The pity of it is that comparatively 

 little is seen or heard of him by humans who 

 would be glad to know him better ; for he shows 

 his fetching black, white, and yellow-striped cap, 

 his white ascot tie and his warm brown jacket, 

 and sings his beautiful little song, only on his 

 way to and from his breeding groimd in the 

 Canadian forests. This at least is true of the 

 great majority of White-throats, though many 

 breed in northern New York, Maine and in the 

 New England moimtains as far south as northern 

 Massachusetts. Both in spring and in fall the 

 birds are likely to travel in little flocks and to 

 spend much f)f their time on the ground, where 



they scratch vigorously like Towhees and Juncos. 

 In this operation a White-throat creates a 

 commotion in the dry leaves which suggests 

 the presence of a bird or animal many times 

 its size. 



There are few bird utterances at once more 

 characteristic and more appealing than the fin- 

 ished song of this Sparrow. Various eflorts have 

 lieen made to represent the song in words, but all 

 of these attempts are more or less unsatisfac- 

 tory, for the very good and sufficient reason that 

 they fail utterly to express the spirit of the utter- 

 ance. " Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody " 

 is the common New England rendition, from 

 which is derived the popular name of " Peabody 

 liird," but as W. Leon Dawson, the Ohio orni- 





Drawing by R. I. Brasher 



WHITE-THROATED SPARROW {\ nat. size) 



