OF NEW ENGLAND. 221 
they can obtain in swamps, stubble-fields, or on the roadsides ; 
but they also frequent woodland. They are so shy as to escape 
general notice, the more so from their strong resemblance to 
the ** Peabody-birds” (Z. albicollis). 
(d). I have heard them sing during their brief stay here but 
once or twice. Their song, and their “‘tseep,” are almost 
exactly like those of the White-throated Sparrow, already 
described. 
XVI. PASSERELLA 
(A) miaca. Fox-colored Sparrow. Fox Sparrow. 
(A common migrant through New England, but never resi- 
dent there.) 
(a). About seven inches long. Above, bright rusty-red or 
fox-color ; back with large, and crown with small, ashy streaks. 
Wings, rusty, with two slender white bars. Below, white; 
marked, except on the belly, with chains of rusty or fox-colored 
blotches, which are here and there confluent. 
(6). The nests and eggs,‘’s is the case with many others 
which are not to be found in New England, I must describe 
through other writers. Dr. Brewer says: *‘Their eggs measure 
from -92 to an inch in length, and ‘70 in breadth. They are 
oblong in shape. Their ground-color is a light bluish-white, 
thickly spotted with a rusty-brown, often so fully as to conceal 
the ground.” 
(c). The Fox-colored Sparrows are the largest and most 
strikingly handsome of all our sparrows, and as musicians are 
unsurpassed by any birds of that group. They are among the 
few land-birds that are known to occur in New England as 
migrants only, passing the summer in Labrador and other cold 
countries. While journeying to the South, they are in Massa- 
chusetts during the latter part of October, as well as through- 
out the following month, and I have seen them here so late as 
the ninth of December. Though they are then less often found 
in swamps, and do not sing, their habits are otherwise the 
same as in the spring. At that season, on their return to the 
North, they usually reach Boston about the middle of March, 
