42 Sketches of Some Common Birds. 



vulture wheels around a projecting angle of the grove, 

 careening low in the full strength of its broad pinions, do 

 we not immediately infer that it is thus impelled by a 

 powerful craving for its natural food? Have you not 

 seen the blue jay flitting silently from tree to tree in an 

 orchard or row of highway maples, and instinctively de- 

 cided that it was guilty in intent if not in deed? The 

 robin flits swiftly across our path and wings its way 

 around intervening objects in a manner so business-like 

 that we i^erceive it has an object in view, perhaps a mud 

 hut upon a horizontal branch of an elm, or in a high 

 crotch of a tall maple yonder. But who ever saw a grass- 

 hopper sparrow start out in flight as though it knew 

 whither it was bound? In fact, its starting is so sudden 

 that it surely has no time to plan its course or determine 

 its destination. A hurried darting through the grass to 

 mislead the observer as to its starting point, a blurred vis- 

 ion of brown mottled with yellow, and away it goes in a 

 zigzag, erratic course, as though dodging an invisible pur- 

 suer close at its heels, up and down with the jerky movement 

 peculiar to the sparrows, apparently progressing through 

 the air by short leaps above the general level of the line 

 of its flight, until it drops vertically into the grass and 

 vanishes. Thus it behaves also when not startled, for it 

 sometimes takes an airing over the meadow toward even- 

 ing, flying usually about six or eight feet above the sur- 

 face, following a circular course in the general result, but 

 varying to the right and left of a true circle. In these 

 evening excursions it rises from the ground with its char- 

 acteristic, hurried movements, and at their close it drops 

 as abruptly and aimlessly into the grass as though escap- 

 ing from impending danger and confused beyond the use 

 of its guiding faculties. These voluntary flights of this 

 sparrow are not often observed, and only in the vivacity 

 of the mating season does it j^artially forget its ordinary 

 proclivities. 



In the second and revised Check-list of North Amer- 

 ican Birds, the grasshopper sparrows are given a geo- 

 raphic distribution throughout " Eastern United States 

 and Southern Canada, west to the plains, south, in win- 

 ter, to Florida, Cuba, Porto Eico, and coast of Central 



