SPECIES 11. FRINGILLA MARITIME, 



SEA-SIDE FINCH. 

 [Plate XXXIV. Fig. 2.] 



OF this bird I can find no description. It inhabits the low, 

 rush-covered sea islands along our Atlantic coast, where I first 

 found it; keeping almost continually within the boundaries of 

 tide water, except when long and violent east or north-easterly 

 storms, with high tides, compel it to seek the shore. On these 

 occasions it courses along the margin, and among the holes and 

 interstices of the weeds and sea-wrack, with a rapidity equalled 

 only by the nimblest of our Sandpipers, and very much in their 

 manner. At these times also it roosts on the ground, and runs 

 about after dusk. 



This species derives its whole subsistence from the sea. I 

 examined a great number of individuals by dissection, and found 

 their stomachs universally filled with fragments of shrimps, 

 minute shell fish, and broken limbs of small sea crabs. Its flesh, 

 also, as was to be expected, tasted offish, or was what is usually 

 termed sedgy. Amidst the recesses of these wet sea marches 

 it seeks the rankest growth of grass, and sea weed, and climbs 

 along the stalks of the rushes with as much dexterity as it runs 

 along the ground, which is rather a singular circumstance, 

 most of our climbers being rather awkward at running. 



The Sea-side Finch is six inches and a quarter long, and eight 

 and a quarter in extent; chin pure white, bordered on each side 

 by a stripe of dark ash, proceeding from each base of the lower 

 mandible, above that is another slight streak of white j from the 

 nostril over the eye extends another streak which immediately 

 over the lores is rich yellow, bordered above with white, and 

 ending in yellow olive; crown brownish olive, divided laterally 



