_ 
344 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 
DESCRIPTION. 
The feathers above dark-brown, margined with brownish-white, and with a ter- 
minal blotch of pale reddish-brown; exposed portions of wings and tail with trans- 
verse dark-brown bars, which on the middle tail feathers are confluent along the 
shaft; beneath yellow, with a black pectoral crescent, the yellow not extending on 
the side of the maxilla; sides, crissum, and tibiw pale reddish-brown, streaked with 
blackish; a light median and superciliary stripe, the latter yellow anterior to the 
eye; a black line behind. 
Length, ten and sixty one-hundredths inches; wing, five; tail, three and seventy 
one-hundredths inches; bill above, one and thirty-five one-hundredths inches. 
This beautiful and well-known bird is a common summer 
inhabitant of the three southern New-England States, but is 
more rare in the others. Ifa mild winter, it remains through 
the year; but generally leaves for the South late in the 
fall, and returns about the “second or third week in 
March.” It commences building about the second week 
in May, sometimes earlier: the locality is generally in a 
meadow or low field. The nest is usually built in a tussock 
of grass: it ‘is pretty compact, made of dry, wiry grass, 
to which a hidden and almost winding path is made, and 
generally so well concealed that the nest is only to be found 
when the bird is flushed.’’ — Nurrath. 
A number of nests that I have examined agree with this 
description: all were beneath bunches of grass; and, though 
