3o6 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Peeverly, Peeverly " ; but farther north he is supposed to say, " Oh, sweet, 

 Canada, Canada, Canada." The song is rather plaintive and delivered in a 

 minor key, but is one of the sweetest songs among the sparrows especially 

 when heard along the northern trout streams or in the cool spruce forests 

 or in the moonlight night from near one's camp in the deep woods. 



The White-throat breeds not only .in the clearings, but more or less 

 throughout the coniferous forest of the Adirondacks, especially nep.r the 

 streams and borders of swamps, or wherever the wind or fire has made 

 small openings in the woods. The nest will be found on the ground or 

 near it in a thick bush, composed of coarse grasses and rootlets, mosses 

 and strips of bark, lined with finer materials. The eggs are 4 or 5 in ntimber, 

 bluish white speckled and blotched with pale reddish brown and obscure 

 shell markings. They average .83 by .60 inches in dimensions. Judging 

 from the fact that I found nests with fresh eggs as late as the 20th of July, 

 I am inclined to think that two broods are usually reared in the Adirondack 

 district. The first sets of eggs are fotmd late in May or during the first 

 half of June. 



Spizella monticola monticola (Gmelin) 



Tree Sparrow 



Plate 80 



Fringilla monticola Gmelin. Syst. Nat. 1789. 1:912 

 Emberiza canadensis DeKay. Zool. N. Y. 1844. pt 2, p. 160, fig. 164 

 Spizella monticola monticola A. O. U. Check List. Ed. 3. 1910. p. 263. 

 No. SS9 . 

 spizella, Lat., diminutive, from Gr., <sxiX,a, finch'; monticola, Lat., mountain inhabitant 



Description. Crown chestnut rufous; a rufotis stripe backward from 

 the eye, and a spot of the same on either side of the breast near the bend 

 of the wing; superciliary stripe and the greater portion of the sides of the 

 head and the neck gray; hack striped with rusty brown, blackish and buffy 

 whitish; scapulars and inner wing feathers similar to bac*k; 2 conspicuous 

 white wing bars; lower back and tail coverts plain grayish brown; tail dusky 

 grayish, the feathers edged with grayish .white; under part dingy whitish 

 tinged with grayish brown on the sides; a blackish spot on the center of the 

 breast; bill yellowish at the base of the lower mandible, dusky at the tip. 



Length 6.36 inches; extent 9.5; wing 3; tail 2.82; bill .41; tarsus .8. 



