318 ORNITHOLOGY AND OOLOGY. 



Description. 



' Middle of back with the feathers dark-brown centrally, then rufous, and edged 

 with pale- fulvous (sometimes with whitish). Hood and upper part of nape continu- 

 ous chestnut; a line of the same from behind the eye; sides of head and neck ashy; 

 a broad light superciliary band; beneath whitish, with a small circular blotch of 

 brownish in the middle of the upper part of the breast; edges of tail feathers, pri- 

 mary quills, and two bands across the tips of the secondaries, white; tertiaries nearly 

 black; edged externally with rufous, turning to white near the tips; lower jaw yel- 

 low; upper black. 



This species varies in the amount of whitish edging to the quills and tail. 



Length, six and twenty-five one-hundredths inches; wing, three inches. 



H^.b. — Eastern North America to the Missouri; also on Pole Creek and Little 

 OoieraJo Kiver, New Mexico. 



This species occurs in New England only as a winter 

 visitor. It arrives from the North about the last of October, 

 and remains in swamps and sheltered thickets through the 

 winter, and until the first week in May. While with us, it 

 is gregarious, and often visits stubble-fields and gardens, 

 where it feeds upon the seeds of grasses and various weeds. 

 It has, at this season, a persistent twitter, which is uttered 

 by all the members of the flock at short intervals. As it 

 sometimes utters a sweet soft warble in the spring, it un- 

 doubtedly possesses quite a song during the mating season. 



It is not impossible that this bird sometimes breeds in 

 the most northern sections of these States ; but there is no 

 authenticated instance on record of its doing so. The bird 

 alluded to in the " Proceedings of the Boston Society of 

 Natural History " (vol. Y. p. 213) was undoubtedly the 

 Chipping Sparrow. 



The Tree Sparrow breeds, according to Mr. Hutchins, 

 around the Hudson's Bay settlements. "Its nest is placed 

 in the herbage, is formed externally of mud and dry 

 grass, and lined with soft hair or down, — probably from 

 plants, — in the manner of the Yellow-bird." The eggs 

 are about five in number: they are of a light grayish-blue 

 color, and are marked with spots and blotches of two shades 

 of brown and red. To compare them with another species, 

 I would say that they almost exactly reseml)le small speci- 

 mens of the eggs of the common Song Sparrow. They are 



