SNOW-BIRD. Ill 



This species may easily be distinguished from the four preceding 

 ones, by his black bill and frontlet, and by his familiarity in summer ; 

 yet, in the month of August and September, when they moult, the black 

 on the front and partially on the bill disappears. The young are also 

 without the black during the first season. 



The Chipping Sparrow is five inches and a quarter long, and eight 

 inches in extent ; frontlet black ; chin and line over the eye whitish ; crown 

 chestnut; breast and sides of the neck pale ash; bill in winter black, in 

 summer the lower mandible flesh colored ; rump dark ash ; belly and vent 

 white ; back variegated with black and bright bay ; wings black, broadly 

 edged with bright chestnut ; tail dusky, forked, and slightly edged with 

 pale ochre ; legs and feet a pale flesh color. The female diff"ers in having 

 less black on the frontlet, and the bay duller. Both lose the black 

 front in moulting. 



Species VII. FRINGILLA EUDSONIA* 



SNOW-BIRD. 



[Plate XVI. Fig. 6.] 



Fringilla Uudsonia, Turton, Si/st. i., 568. — Emberiza hijemalis, Id. 531. — Lath, i., 

 66. — Catesbt, I., 36. — Arct. Zool. p. 359, No. 223. — Passer nivalis, Bartram, p. 

 291. 



This well known species, small and insignificant as it may appear, is 

 by far the most numerous, as well as the most extensively disseminated, 

 of all the feathered tribes that visit us from the frozen regions of the 

 north. Their migrations extending from the Arctic Circle, and pro- 

 bably beyond it, to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, spreading over 

 the whole breadth of the United States from the Atlantic Ocean to 

 Louisiana ; how much farther westward I am unable to say. About the 

 twentieth of October they make their first appearance in those parts of 

 Pennsylvania east of the Allegliany Mountains. At first they are most 

 generally seen on the borders of woods among the falling and decayed 

 leaves, in loose flocks of thirty or forty together, always taking to the 

 trees when disturbed. As the weather sets in colder they approacli 

 nearer the farm-house and villages ; and on the appearance of what is 

 usually called falling weather, assemble in larger flocks, and seem 

 doubly diligent in searching for food. This increased activity is geiic- 

 rally a sure prognostic of a storm. When deep snow covers the ground 



* Fringilla hyemalis, Linn. Syst. Ed. 10, i , p. 183, 30. 



