8 JOURNAL OF MAINE ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Audubon mentions that his heart was frequently cheeied by their 

 beautiful minstrelsy while wandering among the dreary wastes of 

 lyabrador, and that he found its nest there. It was formed out- 

 wardly of soft, dry moss ; then came a layer of fine grass, and an 

 inner lining w^as of a fibrous root of a yellow color, almost as fine as 

 hair. The nest was placed in the moss, near the foot of a low fir, 

 and contained five eggs. 



Should you ever meet with the White-crowned Sparrow, you 

 may know it by the delicate, snow-white stripe on the top of its head. 



The Mockingbird Wintering at Portland, Maine. 



By Miss Elizabeth W. Russell. 

 On December 15th, 1908, after a heavy fall of snow, followed by 

 rain, I saw, from the window of my home on Bowdoin street, a bird 

 in the hedge bordering Mr. Franklin Payson's grounds, on Vaughan 

 street side. I watched the bird a long while hoping it would fly, 

 but it sat almost motionless until I left the window, and when I came 

 back it had gone. I knew it was not a Robin, although about the 

 size of one, and, as the breast was not mottled or spotted, I knew it 

 could not be a Hermit Thrush. It was not a nervous bird, for men 

 were shoveling and teams passing all the while it was there. I was 

 too far from it to identify it. On the morning of December iSth, 

 about eight o'clock, a bird flew to the hedge, close to our window, — 

 about three feet from it, — -which I saw was the same bird I had seen 

 three days before. He stayed there where I could study him at 

 close range for half an hour or more, and, although it seemed incredi- 

 ble, I could not make him out anything but a Mockingbird. We 

 had a mounted specimen in the house with which I compared the 

 live bird, and there was only the differences with which we are all 

 familiar between birds dead and those alive. Some time after a 

 neighbor telephoned me, to ask about a bird which came to eat the 

 crumbs they threw out for the English Sparrows, with them. She 

 described the bird I had seen and thought it might be a Shrike. I 

 told her that when the Shrike and the English Sparrow fed together 



