316 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY, 



kinds of weeds that still rise above the snow in corners of fields, 

 and low, sheltered situations, along the borders of creeks and fences, 

 where they associate with several other sjiecies of Sparrows. They 

 are, at this time, easily caught with almost any kind of trap ; are 

 generally fat, and, it is said, are excellent eating. 



" I cannot but consider this bird as the most numerous of its 

 tribe of any within the United States. From the northern parts 

 of the District^ of Maine to the Ogeechee River in Georgia, — a 

 distance, by the circuitous route in which I travelled, of more than 

 eighteen hundred miles, — I never passed a day, and scarcely a 

 mile, without seeing numbers of these birds, and frequently large 

 flocks of several thousands. Other travellers with whom I con- 

 versed, who had come from Lexington, in Kentucky, through Vir- 

 ginia, also declared that they found these birds numerous along the 

 whole road. It should be observed, that the roadsides are their 

 favorite haunts, where many rank weeds that grow along the 

 fences • furnish them with food, and the road with gravel. In 

 the vicinity of places where they were most numerous, I observed 

 a Small Hawk, and several others of his tribe, watching their 

 opportunity, or hovering cautiously around, making an occasional 

 sweep among them, and retiring to the bare branches of an old 

 cypress to feed on their victims. In the month of April, when the 

 weather begins to be warm, they are observed to retreat to 

 the woods, and to prefer the shaded sides of hills and thickets ; at 

 which time, the males warble out a few very low, sweet notes, and 

 are almost perpetually pursuing and fighting with each other. 

 About the 20th of April, they^ take their leave of our humble 

 regions, and retire to the North and to the high ranges of the Alle- 

 ghany to build their nests and rear their young. In some of those 

 ranges, in the interior of Virginia, and northward, about the wa- 

 ters of the west branch of the Susquehanna, they breed in great 

 numbers. The nest is fixed in the ground, or among the grass ; 

 sometimes several being within a small distance of each other. 

 According to the observations of the gentlemen residing at Hudson- 

 Bay Factory, they arrive there about the beginning of June, stay 

 a week or two, and proceed farther north to breed. They return 

 to that settlement in the autumn, on their way to the South. 

 1 Now State, 



