all 
302 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
This bird seems to be rather irregularly distributed 
throughout New England in the summer season. In the 
eastern part of Massachusetts, it is quite common; in 
the western part, “chiefly a spring and summer visitant,”’ 
but “not common.” Mr. Allen has never found it breed- 
ing in the neighborhood of Springfield; but, in the neighbor- 
hood of the seacoast in the same State, it is abundant in 
the breeding season. On the contrary, in Maine, it is not 
very common near the seacoast; but in the interior, even 
as far as the western borders, it is one of the most plentiful 
of Sparrows. It arrives in Massachusetts as early as the 
first week in April; in Maine, seldom before the middle of 
that month. About the first week in May in Massachusetts, 
and later as we advance north, the birds commence build- 
ing. The nest is placed on the ground, usually under a 
tussock of grass: it is constructed of fine grasses and 
roots, which are bent and twined together rather neatly; 
and the whole is lined with hairlike roots and fine grass. 
The eggs are usually four in number, grayish-white in color, 
and covered irregularly with spots of umber-brown and lilac. 
Their form varies from long and slender to quite short 
and thick: their dimensions vary from .76 by .60 to .72 by 
.O8 inch. Two broods are often reared in the season. This 
‘species rather prefers pastures and fields at a distance from 
houses for a home to their more immediate neighborhood. 
On the seaboard, this species is most often found on or 
near the sandy beaches, where it is observed busily glean- 
ing, in the seaweed and little bunches of beach-grass, the 
insects and mollusks that are found there. In the interior, 
it prefers the dry, sandy fields and pastures, where, running 
about with great rapidity, its white outer tail feathers spread, 
it is always industrious in its search for coleopterous insects 
and seeds. 
The female, when the nest is approached, leaves it, and 
runs limping off, her wings extended, uttering the chatter- 
ing cry peculiar to the Sparrows. 
