OF NEW ENGLAND. 37 



(A rather rare migrant through Massachusetts.) 



(a). 7-7 J inches long. Above, soft, dusky olive (occas- 

 ionally with a reddish-brown tinge). Sides of the head buff, 

 and breast strongly tinged with the same color. The latter 

 and the sides of the throat, thickly spotted with dusky. Eye- 

 ring buff. 



(b). The nest is a rather bulky structure, usually composed 

 of twigs, mosses, grasses, leaves, etc., with no mud, and 

 sometimes lined with the coal-black hairs of a certain moss. 

 It is placed in a spruce, low tree, or perhaps a bush, from three 

 to ten feet above the ground. It is often built beside a road 

 or wood-path. The first set, of three or four eggs, is usually 

 laid in the first, or perhaps more often the second week of June ; 

 the second set is laid four or five weeks later. The eggs are 

 much like those of the Scarlet Tanager, being about *95 X "70 

 of an inch, and light blue, olive-tinged, either finely marked 

 with indistinct brown, or coarsely spotted (with a few fine 

 markings beside), chiefly at the great end, with obscure lilac, 

 and two shades of brown. 



(c). Though the Swainson's Thrushes are by no means very 

 common migrants through Eastern Massachusetts, yet a vigi- 

 lant and energetic ornithologist can hardly fail to meet with 

 them in the spring. Groves of tall hemlocks are among the 

 places, where, about the middle of May, I have seen these 

 birds, not on the ground, but among the branches of the trees, 

 from which they occasionally dart into the air and catch insects 

 in the manner of flycatchers. I have also met them in swampy 

 roads, or even in orchards, and have observed them on the 

 ground, often moving quite rapidly, or pausing in a rather erect 

 attitude. Probably, it is partly because of their usual shy- 

 ness while migrating, partly because they often frequent the 

 higher branches, and partly because two of their ordinary notes 

 are very much like those of the Snow-birds (of whom a few 

 linger in May), that they are often considered rarer than they 

 are. Before June all the Olive-backed Thrushes pass beyond 

 the limits of this State, and of these many spend the summer 

 in northern Vermont or New Hampshire, and in Maine, some 



