THE O. & O. SEMI-ANNUAL. hie 
were mentioned above. 
Its arrival here in Spring, during the Jast week in April, is made 
known by its peculiar, insect-like song. ‘It is something like this: 
zip-zip-zz-rr-r-r-e-e-e-ee or zz-e-e-ee. This is his simple perching 
song ; but while on the wing he often gives utterance to a peculiar 
warbling, rolling, rollicking whistle, seeming to glide down on the 
scale of his own music. 
Perched on some convenient weed-stalk or blade of grass, his yel- 
low-edged wings and yellow loral spot, with the buffy line over the 
eye, and buff-colored breast, show to such advantage that one hardly 
notices that the bird is otherwise a very plainly colored one. The 
wings and back are curiously variegated with black, gray, yellowish- 
brown and purplish-bay ; the crown divided by a brownish-yellow line ; 
the neck and rump appear lighter; the flight and tail feathers are 
plain dusky. Ycllow-wing is about five inches from tip of beak to end 
of tail, with an expanse of wing often equalling 8% inches. 
The three to six eggs are laid about May 2oth, in this locality, 
though I have taken sets of three in July. The ground-color is gray- 
ish-white, speckled and spotted, sometimes blotched, with reddish- 
brown, and lilac and lavender shell markings—the latter are confined 
to the larger end, the former may be either pretty evenly scattered 
over the entire egg, or confined to the large end, where they become 
confluent with the lilac and lavender shell markings so as to hide the 
ground color. They measure .72x.60 to .76x.64. 
