580 BLACK-THROATED BUNTING. 
favourable to them ; and it is probably for this reason that none are 
found in any purely sandy part of the State of New Jersey. 
The Black-throated Buntings reach our Middle States about the 
10th or 15th of May, and at once betake themselves to the dry meadow 
lands and grain fields, where they soon after begin to breed. The 
males are often observed perched on the top branches of the shade 
trees found in those places, and engaged in delighting their mates with 
their simple ditty, which, according to my learned friend Mr Notratt, 
resembles “tic “tic-tshé tshé tshé tshe, and tship tship, tsché tsché tsché tschip. 
To my ears the notes of our Black-throated Bunting so much resemble 
those of the Corn Bunting of Europe, Hmberiza Milharia, that I have 
often been reminded of the one by hearing the song of the other. These 
unmusical notes are almost continuously uttered from sunrise to sun- 
set, and all this while the female is snugly seated on her eggs, and lis- 
tening to her beloved. He often visits her, alighting within a few. 
yards of where she is concealed, and then cautiously proceeding toward 
the spot on foot, through the grass. When the bird leaves the nest, it 
creeps along to’some distance, and then flies off low over the ground. 
About the first of June the nest is formed. It is constructed of 
fine grass neatly woven in a circular form, and is partly imbedded 
in the soil, and sheltered or concealed by a tuft of herbage. The 
eggs, usually five, are six and a half eighths in length, four and three- 
fourths in breadth, of a sullied white, generally sprinkled with faint 
touches of different tints of umber. In Pennsylvania, it seldom rears 
more than one brood in the season ; but in the Texas, I have reason to 
believe that it raises two. . 
The flight of this bird, when it has settled in a place, is usually of 
short extent. The male, while passing to and fro from the nest, exhi- 
bits a quivering motion of the wings. ‘The female seldom shews this, 
unless when her property is in danger from intruders. While travel- 
ling, which they always do by day, they pass high over the trees, in 
flocks of thirty or forty, which suddenly alight at the approach of night, 
and throw themselves into the most thickly-leaved trees, where they 
repose until dawn I have surprised them in such situations both in 
Kentucky and in Louisiana, and on shooting into the place to which 
they had betaken themselves, although I could not see them, have pro- 
cured several at one discharge ; which proved in one instance to be 
males, and in the other females, thus shewing that the sexes travel se 
