306 Ornithology of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. 
golden brown. The notes of both birds vary unmistakably. 
Both are sweet singers, so sweet that I have no preferences to 
give. 
COMMON SNOW BIRD (Plectrophanes nivalis Linn.) 
Wilson, in his account of this familiar little bird, speaks of 
it as “half domesticated,” in consequence only of the incle- 
mency of winter and the necessities caused by the season. 
Carrying out this idea he assumes, that * there must be some- 
thing in the temperature of the blood or constitution of this 
bird which unfits it for residing during summer in the lower 
parts of the United States," and conjectures that, * perhaps 
its habits of associating in such. numbers to breed, and build- 
ing its nest with so little precaution, may, to insure its safety, 
require a solitary region, far from the intruding footsteps of 
man." Mr. Audubon, speaking of the same bird, in his first 
edition, went a little farther, and said that nothing was known 
of its breeding-places.. Although this was corrected in his 
later publication, Mr. Gould, who includes this among his 
** Birds of Europe," repeats the idea, that its breeding-places 
are unknown, and some very pretty pieces of poetry have 
been based upon this idea of its fleeing “ far from the intrud- 
ing footsteps of man," although in winter it seems so familiar 
and confiding. . I am sorry to have to destroy so poetical and 
so fanciful an illusion, but the truth is the reverse of this. In 
the first place, the bird does not “associate to breed.” At that 
period all its propensities to socialism are for the time at an 
end, and like other birds the flocks separate into pairs. 
While it breeds abundantly in the high lands of Virginia, 
Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, it is found 
lso in the low lands, breeding as far south as Brunswick, in 
Maine. So far from being a shy or unfamiliar bird in the 
season of its breeding, no bird is more the reverse. No bird 
throughout Nova Scotia is more familiar or a greater pet 
than the little * Blue Bird,” or * Blue Sparrow,” as it is there 
called. It frequents instead of shunning the abode of man. 
