344 



ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



DESCRIPTION. 



The feathers above dark-brown, margined with brownish-white, and with a ter- 

 minal blotch of pale reddish-brown; exposed portions of wings and tail with trans- 

 verse dark-brown bars, which on the middle tail feathers are confluent along the 

 shaft; beneath yellow, with a black pectoral crescent, the yellow not extending on 

 the side of the maxilla ; sides, crissum, and tibiae pale reddish-brown, streaked with 

 blackish; a light median and superciliary stripe, the latter yellow anterior to the 

 eye; a black line behind. 



Length, ten and sixty one-hundredths inches; wing, five; tail, three and seventy 

 one-hundredth* inches; bill above, one and thirty-five one-hundredths inches. 



This beautiful and well-known bird is a common summer 

 inhabitant of the three southern New-England States, but is 

 more rare in the others. If a mild winter, it remains through 



the year ; but generally leaves for the South late in the 

 fall, and returns about the " second or third week in 

 March." It commences building about the second week 

 in May, sometimes earlier: the locality is generally in a 

 meadow or low field. The nest is usually built in a tussock 

 of grass : it "is pretty compact, made of dry, wiry grass, 

 to which a hidden and almost winding path is made, and 

 generally so well concealed that the nest is only to be found 

 when the bird is flushed." NUTTALL. 



A number of nests that I have examined agree with this 

 description : all were beneath bunches of grass ; and, though 



