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316 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
kinds of weeds that still rise above the snow in corners of fields, 
and low, sheltered situations, along the borders of creeks and fences, 
where they associate with several other species of Sparrows. They 
are, at this time, easily caught with almost any kind of trap; are 
generally fat, and, it is said, are excellent eating. 
“T cannot but consider this bird as the most numerous of its 
tribe of any within the United States. From the northern parts 
of the District! of Maine to the Ogeechee River in Georgia, —a 
distance, by the circuitous route in which I travelled, of more than 
eighteen hundred miles, —I never passed a day, and scarcely a 
mile, without seeing numbers of these birds, and frequently large 
flocks of several thousands. Other travellers with whom I con- 
versed, who had come from Lexington, in Kentucky, through Vir- 
ginia, also declared that they found these birds numerous along the 
whole rodd. It should be observed, that the roadsides are their 
favorite haunts, where many rank weeds that grow along the 
fences furnish them with food, and the road with, gravel. In 
the vicinity of places where they were most numerous, I observed 
a Small Hawk, and several others of his tribe, watching their 
opportunity, or hovering cautiously around, making an occasional 
sweep among them, and retiring to the bare branches of an old 
cypress to feed on their victims. In the month of April, when the 
weather begins to be warm, they are observed to retreat to 
the woods, and -to prefer the shaded sides of hills and thickets; at 
which time, the males warble out a few very low, sweet notes, and 
are almost perpetually pursuing and fighting with each other. 
About the 20th of April, they take their leave of our humble 
regions, and retire to the North and to the high ranges of the Alle- 
ghany to build their nests and rear their young. In some of those 
ranges, in the interior of Virginia, and northward, about the wa- 
ters of the west branch of the Susquehanna, they breed in great 
numbers. ‘The nest is fixed in the ground, or among the grass; 
sometimes several being within a small distance of each other. 
According to the observations of the gentlemen residing at Hudson- 
Bay Factory, they arrive there about the beginning of June, stay 
a week or two, and proceed farther north to breed. They return 
to that settlement in the autumn, on their way to the South. 
1 Now State. 
