L 
THE INDIGO-BIRD. 331 
Female.— Brown above; whitish, obscurely streaked or blotched with brownish- 
yellow beneath; immature males similar, variously blotched with blue. 
Length, about five and seventy-five one-hundredths inches; wing, nearly three 
inches. 
Hab. —FEastern United States to the Missouri, south to Guatemala. 
This beautiful species is pretty generally distributed 
throughout New England as a summer visitor, and is rather 
common in thickly settled districts. It arrives from the 
south about the 10th of May, and soon mates and selects its 
home for the ensuing summer. Says Nuttall, — 
“Though naturally shy, active, and suspicious, they still, at this 
interesting period of procreation, resort chiefly to the precincts of 
habitations, around which they are far more common than in the 
solitary woods, seeking their borders, or the thickets by the sides of 
the road; but their favorite resort is the garden, where, from the 
topmost bough of some tall tree, which commands the whole wide 
landscape, the male regularly pours out his lively chant, and 
continues it for a considerable length of time. Nor is this song 
confined to the cool and animating dawn of morning; but it is 
renewed and still more vigorous during the noonday heat of sum- 
mer. This lively strain seems composed of a repetition of short 
notes, commencing loud and rapid, and then, slowly falling, they 
descend almost to a whisper, succeeded by a silent interval of about 
half a minute, when the song is again continued as before. .The 
most common of these vocal expressions sounds like, tshe tshe 
ishe —tshé tshéé tshéé —tshé tshe tshe. ‘The middle syllables are 
uttered lispingly in a very peculiar manner, and the three last 
gradually fall: sometimes it is varied and shortened into tshea 
tshea tshea tshreh, the last sound being sometimes doubled. This 
shorter song is usually uttered at the time that the female is 
engaged in the cares of incubation, or as the brood already appear, 
and when too great a display of his music might endanger the 
retiring security of his family.” 
The Indigo-bird commences building about the last of 
May. The nest is usually’ placed in low bushes, often 
bramble and brier bushes, usually near houses and gar- 
dens: it is constructed of coarse sedge grass, some withered 
