322 BIRDS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 



from uneasiness, they ascend to the highest branches and open 

 their plaintive and emphatic strain. In the warmer days, they 

 resort more to the borders of woods, but the thicket is always 

 their favorite home. They appear to have no great dread of 

 the presence of man ; but the hawks are very destructive to 

 them, and the sparrows seem aware of their danger, and de- 

 sirous to keep as much as possible out of their sight and reach. 

 In New Hampshire their note is interpreted into a warning, 

 that the time to sow wheat is come. Their stay does not ex- 

 ceed two weeks ; and, when they leave us, they go to the far 

 north. Dr. Richardson found their nests on the banks of the 

 Great Bear Lake. 



The BAY-WINGED PINCH, Fringilla graminea, is a bird, plain 

 in appearance, but pleasant and unpretending in its song, which 

 is constantly heard in fields and dry pastures : they run on the 

 ground, in the manner of larks, in search of the seeds and in- 

 sects which compose their food. To the grass-bird, as it is 

 called, we are indebted for some of the sweetest music of our 

 spring ; their song begins very early in the morning, and con- 

 tinues after sunset, but they are generally silent in the heat of 

 the day. They come early in April, and the best of their 

 song is heard till the summer opens, when their note becomes 

 more monotonous for the season. Some of them spend the 

 winter in Pennsylvania, but most of them go farther to the 

 south to escape the cold. 



The nest is built in the grass, partly sunk in the ground. It 

 is formed of leaves and dry grass, well lined with horse-hair. 

 The eggs, four or five in number, are flesh-colored white, with 

 spots of reddish brown. When the female is disturbed, she 

 pretends lameness, and practises various arts to withdraw at- 

 tention from her young. 



The AMBIGUOUS SPARROW, Fringilla ambigua, of which a 

 single specimen was obtained by Nuttall, was, he says, a young 

 bird; and may undergo some changes in its markings. Audu- 

 bon suggests that it may turn out to be the white-crowned 



