COUES ON BIRDS OF DAKOTA AND MONTANA. 



581 



purplisli-gray, which confers the prevailing tone; this is overlaid with 

 numerous surface markings of points, scratches, and small spots of dark 

 brown, wholly indeterminate in distribution and number, but always 

 conspicuous, being sharply displayed upon the subdued ground color." 

 On those occasions when I approached a nest containing eggs, the 

 female usually walked off quietly, after a little flutter, to some distance, 

 and then took wing ; at other times, however, when there were young 

 in the nest, both parents hovered close overhead, w ith continuous cries. 

 During the summer, when the old birds are breeding, and those of the 

 year are still very young, they are very familiar and heedless, and will 

 scarcely get out of the way. In September, when the large flocks make 

 up, and are joined by P. ])ictus from the north, they become much 

 wilder, fly more strongly, and are then procured with some difi&culty. 

 1 never observed the dense flocking that some writers describe ; the 

 congregation 1 always found to be a straggling one, so that single birds 

 only could be shot on the wing. In the winter, however, or during the 

 migration, the case may be different. The ordinary flight is perfectly 

 undulatory, and not very rapid ; but in the fall the birds have a way of 

 tearing about, when startled, with a wayward course, which renders 

 them difficult to shoot on the wing. The ordinary call-note is a chirp, 

 of peculiar character, but not easy to describe ; besides this, the males 

 during the breeding-season have a pleasing twittering song, uttered 

 while they are flying. The chirp is usually emitted with each impulse 

 of the wings. The birds scatter indiscriminately over the prairie, but 

 are particularly fond of the trails made by buffalo or by wagon-trains, 

 where they can run without impediment, and where doubtless they find 

 food which is not so accessible upon undisturbed ground. Though so 

 generally distributed, there are some spots where they arc particularly 

 numerous, and others again, where, for no assignable reason, they are 

 not to be seen. This curious sort of semi-colonization is witnessed in 

 the cases of many other prairie birds, and some of the smaller rodent 

 mammals, like the pouched gophers and field-mice. 



List of specimens. 



