Towhee. 131 



sometimes arrives on the scene and adds his voice to that 

 of his spouse in remonstrating against the invasion of a 

 jealously guarded home. 



After the nesting season the towhees become shyer and 

 less musical than during the preceding weeks. They 

 resort in families to the high weeds and bushes bordering 

 wooded streams, and seek denser undergrowth than they 

 frequented earlier in the season. At this period they 

 associate with cardinals, song sparrows, and other birds 

 of similar habits, feeding on the seeds of weeds and also 

 on the insect hordes tenanting the drying vegetation at 

 this time of summer. From the latter part of August to 

 the last week of September my record fails to note the 

 presence of the towhees in their accustomed haunts. This 

 is moulting season, and with other birds they seem to 

 disaj^pear from the neighborhood. They reappear about 

 the last week of September with regular migrants, when 

 they are found along hedgerows and in brier patches near 

 woodlands. My journal for September 26, 1893, has this 

 item taken in the woods soon after sunrise : <* Towhees 

 oh e win king in the brush heaps. They are remarkably 

 shy, keeping so well hidden that I saw but one, a female, 

 though I heard several and tried to find them." The 

 females preponderate for the first week, after which the 

 males outnumber the females. On October 14, 1893, I 

 noted that towhees were becoming less numerous, though 

 they remained until October 26th, when the last regular 

 migrant was observed in a hedge bordering a wooded 

 pasture. However, on November 4th a crippled female 

 chewink was observed gleaning among the weeds in a 

 dry ditch crossing a ploughed field, where no towhees had 

 been seen through the summer. It was evidently a 

 belated specimen. 



The shy nature and wary habits of the towhee are 

 manifested most strongly in its nidification. In my 

 earlier years I frequently searched long and carefully for 

 the nest of the chewink, but was always obliged to await 

 the solution of the mystery. On one occasion in an early 

 morning ramble in spring, I detected a male towhee car- 

 rying a straw or piece of dried grass. Immediately I was 

 all enthusiasm to think that at last I had a clue to a nest. 



