BIRDS OF MINNESOTA 279 



broken into short intervals, during which he keeps nervously- 

 twitching, jerking and expanding his somewhat abbreviated 

 tail, or dashing into the air, uttering a chuckling twitter, and 

 sailing off, prairie-hen like to another perch to repeat his 

 beautiful and delicious song. Nesting is usually begun about 

 the middle of May, occasionally earlier, and of tener later. Two 

 broods are reared in a season. They lay four to five white 

 eggs, speckled and blotched with reddish-brown or lilac. 



The nest consists of coarse, dried grasses outwardly, and fine 

 grasses within, and is placed in an excavation in a tuft or tus- 

 sock of the ranker grass of the previous year, the tops of the 

 inner stalks of which are adroitly fastened together and con 

 cealed by other loose material mingled with and dropped upon 

 it, leaving an obscure opening on one side only. A more se- 

 cure or completely concealed home could scarcely be conceived 

 amidst so great exposure in the dry, elevated, open fields, con- 

 stituting their chosen local habitats. Their food consists of 

 insects and worms, for the obtaining of which their bills are 

 remarkably adapted, being very long, acutely tapered from the 

 base which is firm, deep and very strong, thus preparing them 

 to bore through the dry, compact soil of the uplands where 

 they remain. 



Individuals of this species remain very late in the autumn, 

 especially in the southern counties — indeed, Dr. Hvoslef, of 

 Lanesboro, in Fillmore county, which borders Iowa in the south- 

 east, met this bird on the third of January, sitting on the fence 

 in the act of singing — a jolly fellow that. If he had been a 

 permanent resident we should have known that he was daft. 

 They are mostly given by the last of October. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Feathers above dark brown, margined with brownish-white, 

 with a terminal blotch of pale reddish-brown; exposed portions 

 of wing and tail with transverse bars of dark brown bars 

 which are confluent along the shaft on the middle tail feathers; 

 beneath yellow with a black pectoral crescent, the yellow not 

 extending on the side of the maxilla; sides, crissum, and tubiae, 

 pale reddish brown, streaked with blackish; a light median 

 and superciliary stripe, the latter yellow anterior to the eye; 

 and a black line behind. 



Length, 10.60; wing, 5; tail, 3.70; bill above, 1.35. 



Habitat, eastern United States. 



19z 



