346 THE BIRDS OF MAINE 



sedges. This nest measures four inches in external height by 

 two and a quarter in depth internally, the external diameter is 

 five and a half and the internal diameter three and a half 

 inches. The eggs measure 0.99 x 0.73, 0.98 x 0.76, 0.99 x 0.73, 

 1.02x0.74. 



Three to six, more often four or five eggs are laid from as 

 early as June first to as late as the first of July, usually early 

 in June. The eggs are pale bluish green or smoky gray, 

 spotted, blotched and streaked with pen-like lines about the 

 larger end, the markings being black, brown, drab, umber and 

 lavender. The incubation period is fourteen days and the 

 young leave the nest in about sixteen days. The female does 

 all the work of nest building as far as I have been able to 

 ascertain, but the male diligently watches over her safety from 

 some commanding spot, feeds her from time to time and like- 

 wise helps feed the young. 



Only one brood is reared, though other observers in Maine 

 have thought differently. There is a great diversity in time 

 of laying of the eggs, possibly owing to many pair having been 

 drowned out or broken up on their first laying of eggs, which 

 being the case they will lay again. The evidence seems quite 

 clear that they do not lay again when they have successfully 

 reared a brood that season. 



After the young are on the wing they gather into flocks and 

 feed more or less in the surrounding territory. They eat 

 beetles, worms, moths, small grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, 

 grubs and other insects, also later on in summer the seed of 

 Zizania, Calamagrostis and other marsh grasses as well as 

 various Carex seeds. There is good evidence that they some- 

 times take sprouting corn and peas as well as the same when 

 in the tender stages of immaturity, but in Maine their damage 

 to cultivated crops is at the most very slight, and the good 

 they do by destroying insect pests entitles them to take a small 

 part of what they have saved. 



