88 IN BIRD LAND. 



were bine, while the rest of his plumage was brown. 

 He made a unique and pretty picture as he sat 

 atilt on a blackberry stem, asking me with loud 

 Tsips to admire his quaint toilet. Early in the 

 spring I have seen indigo birds in whose plumage 

 the tints were quite dilTerently blended and arranged. 



What a party-colored suit the young bluebird 

 wears ! His breast, instead of being plain brick-red 

 as in the case of the adult bird, is profusely striped 

 with dark brown on a background of soiled white ; 

 and his upper parts, in heu of the warm azure of 

 riper years, are a lustrous brown curiously mottled 

 with tear-shaped blocks of white ; while his wings 

 and tail have already assumed the normal blue of 

 this species. In the days of his youth the chipping- 

 sparrow also dons a striped vest, so that, if it were 

 not for his smaller size, it would be difficult to dis- 

 tinguish him from his relative, the grass-finch. 



My admiration was especially stirred, one mid- 

 summer day, by the dainty appearance of a small 

 coterie of bush-sparrows flitting about on a railroad 

 which I was pursuing on foot ; a large patch on 

 their wings was of a dark, glossy brown tint, 

 extremely pretty, and looking precisely as if it had 

 been painted by the deft hand of an artist. Their 

 under parts were variously streaked with white and 

 dusk. At first I scarcely recognized my familiar 

 little sylvan friends ; but their intimacy with several 

 adult specimens, as well as several well-known diag- 

 nostic markings, settled the question of their identity 

 beyond a doubt. 



