THE IPSWICH SPARROW. 27 
of many birds, greet the sun as it now and again pushed aside the fog 
curtains with its long yellow rays. Bright days did not inspirit them, nor 
did dull ones depress them. 
The first place to look for a musician is along the sky line of a neigh- 
boring sand-hill, where he often may be descried, perched a few inches from 
the ground on a tuft of grass, sometimes on the bare sand. He may choose, 
however, a tiny thicket, a turfy hillock, the telephone wires or poles, or a 
fence, from which vantage point a single trill may be all that is vouchsafed, 
or the song may be repeated a few times. Wrapped in my coat, I have 
plodded along, so shut in by the cold sheets of streaming fog that I could only 
liken my surroundings to the sand-hills of our own coast during a winter’s 
snowstorm, and have listened in vain for some sign of the presence of the 
Sparrows that I felt sure were in my vicinity. Presently one is discovered 
walking about on the ground in search of food, and a few minutes later he 
mounts a brown hummock, throws back his head, and breaks into song. 
Others, far and near, promptly join in chorus, and for several minutes the 
air fairly rings with answering songs. Then ensues a period of such 
perfect silence, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, that itis hard to believe there 
is a single bird within earshot. If, however, you will have patience, the 
chorus will very possibly begin again. 
Nest AND Ecos. 
No nest of the Ipswich Sparrow had hitherto been secured, and the 
identification of the supposed eggs from Sable Island in the National 
Museum (see Auk, I, 1884, 292 and 390) had rested on presumptive 
probability rather than on satisfactory evidence. With these facts in mind, 
I devoted much time to the search for nests on Sable Island, and had the 
pleasure of examining nine or ten, from which five complete sets of eggs 
were obtained. The other nests were either abandoned, or only partly 
constructed when I left. On my arrival I was told that the ‘Gray Birds’ 
usually began to lay in June. It soon became evident that some were 
already incubating, and in view of the past season being considered a 
backward one it is probable that in average seasons many of the sets are 
completed by the last week in May. On June 2, after several days’ 
diligent search, I found the first nest; and had I not been spying into all 
sorts of likely and unlikely places I should never have looked in upon the 
three fresh eggs it contained. As I afterwards learned, it was in an 
unusual situation, being placed in a small tuft of beach-grass (Ammophila 
arenaria (£.)), one of several bordering an expanse of soft, muddy bog at 
