BIRDS OF NEW YORK 333 



dull red; greater wing coverts green. Adult female: Upper parts bright 

 olive green ; under parts white washed with greenish yellow ; wings and tail 

 fuscous margined with olive green. 



Length 5.25 inches; wing 2.7; tail 2.15; bill .42. 



Distribution. The Painted bunting or Nonpareil breeds from the 

 Gulf of Mexico as far north as Kansas, southern Illinois, North Carolina, 

 and winters in tropical America. In New York State it is purely an acci- 

 dental visitant. Bicknell, writing in the Bulletin of the Nuttall Orni- 

 thological Club, volume 3, page 132, describes its occurrence at Riverdale 

 July 13, 1875, and on the authority of Akhurst records the capture of 5 or 

 6 specimens near the Narrows on Long Island and two others at Brooklyn. 

 It is barely possible that these specimens had escaped from some cage in 

 which they were being transported to the New York market, but it is 

 equally possible that they were driven by storm up the coast of the eastern 

 United States beyond their usual range, or that they wandered northward 

 as southern species frequently do during their migrations and reached 

 the shores of Long Island in the same manner that the Summer tanager 

 and various other species have done. The occurrence of this bird in New 

 York is also recorded in " Forest and Stream," 1884, page 424. The 

 latest record of an apparently wild bird is from Bridgehampton, Long 

 Island, December 1885, specimen mounted by Knoess, recorded by Butcher 

 in his Long Island notes. In the days when there was more extensive 

 traffic in native birds, numerous specimens of this brilliantly colored 

 bunting were imported and sold in the New York market so that specimens 

 occasionally were noticed which had escaped from confinement or had 

 been liberated; but such specimens exhibit signs of having been kept in 

 cages and they are not included in this report. The specimens recorded 

 were evidently wild birds. 



