588 General Notes. [oct. 



bird, which evidently had died soon after hatching, lay on the front edge 

 of the nest. The living birds had their eyes open and feathers partly 

 covering the head, back, chin, and the sides of breast and belly. A stripe 

 over each eye and one in the center of the crown were buffy; the rest of 

 the upper parts were fuscous, the feathers tipped with buffy; the sides of 

 the throat were buffy, the sides of the breast whitish, streaked with fus- 

 cous, and the sides of the belly whitish. They were still so young that, 

 when touched, they would open wide their bright red, yellow-edged 

 mouths. 



The nest was found after I had quietly watched the parent Sparrows 

 for about an hour, while they were bringing food to their young. Most 

 of the food appeared to be obtained on the salt marsh, within a rod or 

 two of the nest, but the birds visited also an upland hayfield nearby. 

 The old birds never alighted at the nest nor took flight from it, but de- 

 scended and arose at various points distant from one to two yards from 

 their home. On one occasion one of them was observed to carry off a 

 white sack of excrement. The male sang from time to time from a piece 

 of driftwood on the marsh about 30 feet distant from the nest. When 

 I was examining the nest and the young birds, the parents made no demon- 

 stration for some minutes, but later they came near and uttered chip's, 

 much like those of Savannah Sparrows. There was no difficulty in identi- 

 fication, as these birds, with which I have been familiar for some ten 

 years, differ markedly in appearance and song from Savannah Sparrows 

 or any other birds to be found in Nova Scotia. 



On June 17 I again visited this nest, found it empty, and collected it. 

 It has since been presented to the Victoria Memorial Museum, Ottawa, 

 Ontario. When collected, the nest was thoroughly wet, evidently as a 

 result of having been flooded by the high spring tides then occurring, 

 there having been a new moon on June 16, for no rain had fallen at Yarmouth 

 in the interval between my two visits to the nest. There were, of course, 

 spring tides about June 1, the date of the previous full moon, when the 

 nest probably contained eggs, but these would not be as high as the spring 

 tides of the new moon, and may not have reached the nest. There is no 

 apparent reason, however, Avhy the spring tides accompanying the new 

 moon of May 18 should not have been as high as those of the new moon 

 in June and flooded the nest-site. Probably the nest was built immedi- 

 ately after those spring tides subsided. It would be interesting to know 

 if this was a mere coincidence or if these birds, when nesting in salt marshes, 

 take info account the variations in the rise and fall of the tides, and thus, 

 indirectly, the phases of the moon! 



Mr. W. H. Moore has described (Cat, of Can. Birds, Macoun & Macoun, 

 Ottawa, 1909, pp. 507-508) some nests and eggs of this subspecies from 

 fresh-water marshes along the St. John River in New Brunswick, but, 

 so far as I have been able to ascertain, the present is the first description 

 of a salt marsh nest of this species, and the first definitely identified nest 



