202 PAINTED BUNTING. 



cage, stretching out their heads through the wires with eager 

 expectation, evidently much interested in the issue of their suc- 

 cess. 



These birds arrive in Louisiana from the south about the mid- 

 dle of April, and begin to build early in May. In Savannah, 

 according to Mr. Abbot, they arrive about the twentieth of 

 April. Their nests are usually fixed in orange hedges, or on the 

 lower branches of the orange tree; I have also found them in a 

 common bramble or blackberry bush. They are formed exte- 

 riorly of dry grass, intermingled with the silk of caterpillars, 

 lined with hair, and lastly with some extremely fine roots of 

 plants. The eggs are four or five, white, or rather pearl coloured, 

 marked with purplish brown specks. As some of these nests 

 had eggs so late as the twenty-fifth of June, I think it probable 

 that they sometimes raise two broods in the same season. The 

 young birds of both sexes, during the first season, are of a fine 

 green olive above, and dull yellow below. The females under- 

 go little or no change, but that of becoming of a more brownish 

 cast. The males, on the contrary, are long and slow in arriving 

 at their full variety of colours. In the second season the blue 

 on the head begins to make its appearance, intermixed with 

 the olive green. The next year the yellow shows itself on 

 the back and rump; and also the red, in detached spots, on the 

 throat and lower parts. All these colours are completed in the 

 fourth season, except, sometimes, that the green still continues 

 on the tail. On the fourth and fifth season the bird has attained 

 his complete colours, and appears then as represented in the plate 

 (fig. 1). No dependance, however, can be placed on the regulari- 

 ty of this change in birds confined in a cage, as the want of proper 

 food, sunshine, and variety of climate, all conspire against the 

 regular operations of nature. 



The Nonpareil is five inches and three quarters long, and 

 eight inches and three quarters in extent; head, neck above, 

 and sides of the same, a rich purplish blue; eyelid, chin, and 

 whole lower parts, vermilion; back and scapulars glossy yellow, 

 stained with rich green^ and in old birds with red; lesser wing 



