FINCHES. 229 



XVI. PASSERELLA. 



A. ILIACA. Fox-colored Sparrow. Fox Sparrow. A 

 common migrant through New England, but never resident 

 there.* 



a. About seven inches long. Above, bright rusty red or 

 fox-color ; back with large, and crown with small, ashy streaks. 

 Wings, rusty, with two slender white bars. Below, white ; 

 marked, except on the belly, with chains of rusty or fox-col- 

 ored blotches, which are here and there confluent. 



h. The nests and eggs, as is the case with many others 

 which are not to be found in New England, I must describe 

 through other writers. Dr. Brewer says : " Their eggs meas- 

 ure from .92 to an inch in length, and .70 in breadth. They 

 are oblong in shape. Their ground-color is a light bluish 

 white, thickly spotted with a rusty brown, often so fully as to 

 conceal the ground." 



c. The Fox-colored Sparrows are the largest and most 

 strikingly handsome of aU.our Sparrows, and as musicians are 

 unsurpassed by any birds of that group. They are among the 

 few land-birds that are known to occur in New England as mi- 

 grants only, passing the summer in Labrador f and other cold 

 countries. While journeying to the South, they are in Massa- 

 chusetts during the latter part of October, as well as through- 

 out November, and I have seen them here so late as the ninth 

 of December. Though they are then less often found in 

 swamps, and do not sing, their habits are otherwise the same 

 as in the spring. At that season, on their return to the north, 

 they usually reach Boston about the middle of March, and are 

 common for a month or so, a few even lingering until May. 

 They frequent for the most part swampy woodland, unless the 

 water be frozen, though also gardens, stubble-fields, the road- 

 sides, and occasionally the immediate neighborhood of houses 

 (usually, in the last case, only as individuals). They gener- 

 ally gather in parties of from five to twenty, and often associ- 

 ate with other birds, such as the Song Sparrows or Snow-birds, 



* An abundant spring and autumn t Their most southern known hreed- 

 mi^ant throughout New England. — ing-grounds are the Magdalen Islands 

 W. B. in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. — W. B. 



