444 THE BIRDS OF MAINE 



while the Bunting's eggs measure 0.74 x 0.54, 0.70 x 0.54, 

 0.70 X 0.55, 0.72 x 0.54, and their color is pale bluish white. 

 This set was not collected in Maine, but nests and eggs I have 

 seen from near Bangor in the collections of others were similar 

 in every way. Fresh eggs may be expected here from late 

 June to even July fifteenth. 



The food is about equally proportioned in summer between 

 insects and seeds, while in fall it is chiefly seeds. Seeds of 

 golden-rod, aster, thistle and other Composites, as well as 

 grass and weed seeds, and the usual variety of grubs, beetles, 

 green caterpillars, flies and similar things make up their food. 



Genus SPIZA Bonaparte. 



604. Spiza ame7'i<'ann (^Gmel.^. Dickcissel; Black-throated 

 Bunting; Little Field Lark; Judas Bird. 



Plumage of adult male : yellow line over eye and on side of throat ; fore- 

 head tinged yellow ; black patch on throat ; chin and belly white ; head and 

 side of neck ashy gray ; back streaked black and grayish brown ; wings and 

 tail fuscous ; breast yellow. Plumage of female : no black patch on throat ; 

 head grayish brown, streaked with blackish ; otherwise similar to male. 

 Immature plumage : everywhere tinged with dull buffy, otherwise much like 

 female. Wing 3.10 ; culmen 0.50 ; tail 2.40. 



Geog. Dist. — Eastern United States, chiefly in the Mississippi Valley, but 

 west to the Rocky Mountains ; breeding from Texas to Massachusetts, New 

 York, Ontario, and North Dakota ; wintering in Central and South America ; 

 rather rare east of the Alleghany Mountains. 



County Records. — Cumberland ; a specimen, a young male, taken at West- 

 brook by Ralph H. Norton, October 10, 1888, (Norton, J. M. O. S. 1904, p. 57, 

 also Auk. 10, p. 302 and 11, pp. 78-79). Knox; one taken by Fred Rackliff 

 at St. George, (Rackliff) ; one taken on Job's Island, Camden, September 29, 

 1884, a young male, (Townsend, Auk 2, p. 106). 



The species is only a straggler here and does not breed in 



Maine, and only a few instances are known of its breeding in 



Massachusetts. A nest taken at Dubuque, Iowa, June 22, 



1894, is a rather large compact structure of grasses and weed 



(Foot note. — Cyanospiza ciris (Linn.) the Painted Bunting has been taken at Portland, June 

 10, 1904, but the specimen, an adult male, was unmistakably an escaped cage bird, (Norton, 

 J. M. O. S, 1904, p. 56). 



