AUTUMN 77 



found the roadsides swarming with sparrows, 



— a mixed flock, song sparrows, field spar- 

 rows, chippers, and white-crowns. Among 

 them one of us by and by detected a gray- 

 ish, smallish bird, and we began hunting 

 him, from bush to bush and from one side 

 of the road to the other, carrying on all 

 the while an eager debate as to his identity. 

 Now we were sure of him, and now every- 

 thing was unsettled. His breast was streaked 

 and had a yellow band across it. His color 

 and size were right, as well as we could say, 



— so decidedly so that there was no diffi- 

 culty whatever in picking him out at a 

 glance after losing him in a flying bunch ; 

 but some of his motions were pretty song- 

 sparrow-like, and what my fellow observer 

 was most staggered by, he showed a blotch, 

 a running together of the dark streaks, in 

 the middle of the breast, — a point very 

 characteristic of the song sparrow, but not 

 mentioned in book descriptions of Melospiza 

 lincolni. So we chased him and discussed 

 him (that was the time for a gun, the pro- 

 fessional wiU say), tiU he got away from us 

 for good. 



