A NOVEMBER CHRONICLE. 137 



till I was satisfied. They fed much of the 

 time upon the golden-rods, alighted freely 

 upon the fence-posts (which is what some 

 writers would lead us never to expect), and 

 often made use of the regular family tseep. 

 Two of them kept persistently together, as 

 if they were mated. One staggered me 

 by showing a blotch in the middle of the 

 breast, a mark that none of the published 

 descriptions mention, but which I have 

 since found exemplified in one of the skins 

 at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, in 

 Cambridge. 



" A day is happily spent that shows me 

 any bird I never saw alive before." So 

 says Dr. Coues, and he would be a poor 

 ornithologist who could not echo the senti- 

 ment. The Ipswich sparrow was the third 

 such bird that I had seen during the year 

 without going out of New England, the 

 other two being the Tennessee warbler and 

 the Philadelphia vireo. 



Of the remainder of my November list 

 there is not much to be said. Robins were 

 very scarce after the first week. My last 

 glimpse of them was on the 20th, when I 

 saw two. Tree sparrows, snowbirds, chick- 



