308 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



number. Their color is a bluish-white, which is covered 

 with fine brown dots : these dots are coarser in some speci- 

 mens, and almost confluent near the greater end. Dimen- 

 sions vary from .80 by .64 inch to .76 by .60 inch. But one 

 brood is generally reared in the season in this latitude. 



The description, by Wilson, of the habits of the Seaside 

 Finch is so applicable to this species, that I give it here : 

 " It inhabits the low, rush-covered sea islands along our 

 Atlantic Coast, where I first found it ; keeping almost con- 

 tinually within the boundaries of tide-water, except when 

 long and violent east and 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 inter- 

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

 only by the nimblest of our Sand-pipers, 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 of 

 fish, or what is usually termed sedgy. Amidst the re- 

 cesses of these wet sea-marshes, it seeks the rankest growth 

 of grass and seaweed, 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." 



AMMODEOMUS MAEITIMUS. — Swainson. 



The Seaside Finch. 



FringiUa maritima, Wilson. Am. Orn., IV. (1811) 68. Aud. Orn. Biog., L (1831). 

 Ammodromus maritimus, Swainson. Zool. Jour., IIL (1827) 328. 

 FringiUa {Ammodromus) maritima, Nuttall. Man., I. (2d ed., 1840) 592. 

 FringiUa MacgUUvrayi, Audubon. Orn. Biog., IL (1834) 285; IV. (1838) 394; 

 V. (1839) 499. 



FringiUa {Ammodromus) MacgiUivrayi, Nuttall. Man., I. (2d ed., 1840) 593. 



