Z. LUDOVICIANA I ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK. 285 



ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK. 



ZAMELODIA* LUDOVICIANA. (Z.) Coues. 



Chars. Male, adult : Head, neck, and most upper parts, black ; 

 rump, upper tail-coverts, and under parts, white ; the breast and 

 under wing-coverts rosy or carmine red ; wings and tail black, 

 varied with white ; bill whitish ; feet dark. Young males have 

 at first a plumage resembling that of the female, but the rosy of 

 the breast comes with the first feathering. Female : Those parts 

 which in the male are black are streaked with blackish and olive- 

 brown or flaxen-brown ; the crown with a median white stripe ; 

 a white supraciliary stripe ; under parts white, more or less tinged 

 with fulvous and streaked with dusky ; upper wing-coverts and 

 inner wing-quills with a white spot at the end ; under wing-coverts 

 saffron yellow ; bill not whitish. Length, 7.50-8.50 ; extent, 13.00 ; 

 wing, about 4.00 ; tail, 3.25. 



The elegant Rose-breasted Grosbeak, famous for 

 brilliancy both of song and plumage, is a common 

 summer resident of New England as far north as 

 Massachusetts, becoming less numerous farther north, 

 but extending practically over all the Eastern States. 

 Entering Connecticut early in May, and soon being 

 distributed in their summer homes, the beautiful birds 

 nest in June, and usually make haste to retire before 

 the chilly weather of September; though in some 

 exceptional cases loiterers have been found even in 

 November. The distribution of the birds is local, 

 even in latitudes where as a whole the species is abun- 

 dant. The favorite haunts of the bird are the thick- 

 est undergrowth of heavily-timbered tracts, especially 

 'near water, and where the saplings and shrubbery 

 offer that protection from observation which the birds 

 so sedulously court. Sometimes, however, they enter 

 * See Coues, Bull. Nutt. Club, v, 1880, p. 98. 



