64 -TOWHE BUNTING. 



among the dry leaves, near, and sometimes under, a thicket of briars, 

 and is large and substantial. The outside is formed of leaves and 

 pieces of grape-vine bark, and ' the inside of fine stalks of dry grass, 

 the cavity completely sunk beneath the surface of the ground, and 

 sometimes half covered above with dry grass or hay. The eggs are 

 usually five, of a pale flesh color, thickly marked with specks of rufous, 

 most numerous near the great end (see fig. 6). The young are produced 

 about the beginning of June ; and a second brood commonly succeeds 

 in the same season. This bird rarely winters north of the state of 

 Maryland ; retiring from Pennsylvania to the south about the twelfth 

 of October. Yet in the middle districts of Virginia, and thence south 

 to Florida, I found it abundant during the months of January, February 

 and March. Its usual food is obtained by scratching up the leaves ; it 

 also feeds, like the rest of its tribe, on various hard seeds and gravel ; 

 but rarely commits any depredations on the harvest of the husbandman ; 

 generally preferring the woods, and traversing the bottom of fences 

 sheltered with briars. He is generally very plump and fat ; and when 

 confined in a cage soon becomes familiar. In Virginia he is called the 

 Bulfinch ; in many places the Towhe-bird ; in Pennsylvania the Che- 

 wink, and by others the Swamp Robin. He contributes a little to the 

 harmony of our woods in spring and summer ; and is remarkable for 

 the cunning with which he conceals his nest. He shows great afiection 

 for his young ; and the deepest marks of distress on the appearance of 

 their mortal enemy the black-snake. 



The specific name which Linnaeus has bestowed on this bird is deduced 

 from the color of the iris of its eye, which, in those that visit Pennsyl- 

 vania, is dark red. But I am suspicious that this color is not permanent, 

 but subject to a periodical change. I examined a great number of these 

 birds in the month of March, in Georgia, every one of which had the 

 iris of the eye white. Mr. Abbot of Savannah assured me, that at this 

 season, every one of these birds he shot had the iris white, while at 

 other times it was red ; and Mr. Elliot, of Beaufort, a judicious natu- 

 ralist, informed me, that in the month of February he killed a Towhe 

 Bunting with one eye red and the other white ! It should be observed 

 that the iris of the young bird's eye is of a chocolate color, during its 

 residence in Pennsylvania ; perhaps this may brighten into a white dur- 

 ing winter, and these may have been all birds of the preceding year, 

 which had not yet received the full color of the eye. 



The Towhe Bunting is eight inches and a half long, and eleven broad; 

 above black, which also descends rounding on the breast, the sides of 

 which are bright bay, spreading along under the wings ; the belly is 

 white, the vent pale rufous ; a spot of white marks the wing just below 

 the coverts, and another a little below that extends obliquely across the 

 primaries; the tail is long, nearly even at the end; the three exterior 



