BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 277 



song, especially during rainy weather or very early in the morning ; even at this 

 season, however, the bird maintains, for the most part, a dignified silence quite in 

 keeping with its aristocratic bearing and chaste plumage. 



162. Zonotrichia albicoUis (Gmel.). 

 White-throated Sparrow. Peabody-bird. 



Very common transient visitor in spring and autumn ; of late years a winter resident, also, 

 in small numbers, in a few localities. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



April 17, 1892, one seen, Arlington, W. Faxon. 



April 25 — May 15. 

 May 25, 1 87 1, one seen, Cambridge, W. Brewster. 



September 12, 1894, one seen, Cambridge Region, W. Faxon. 

 October I — November 10. (Winter.) 



The White-throated Sparrow is one of the commonest and most conspicu- 

 ous of the migratory birds which visit us in spring and autumn. It is seen or 

 heard almost as frequently in city parks and gardens as in thinly settled local- 

 ities, but although bold and confiding by nature it seldom ventures far from 

 clusters or belts of shrubbery, into which it quickly retreats when alarmed or 

 pursued and in which it spends much of its time scratching for food among the 

 fallen leaves. As a rule it shuns the more extensive woodlands of the Cambridge 

 Region, although it loves to haunt dense, tangled thickets along the courses of 

 brooks, on the edges of swamps, and around the outskirts of weedy fields. Its 

 song, when heard here, usually lacks much of the wild, ringing quality which 

 characterizes it at the height of the breeding season. 



I have no record of the local occurrence of the White-throated Sparrow 

 in winter prior to December 1 1, 1869, when I saw a bird in a garden on Dana 

 Hill, Cambridgeport. In 1882 Mr. Charles R. Lamb killed one on January 7, 

 and another on March 7, in some briery thickets on the borders of the Charles 

 River Marshes close to the Cambridge Cemetery. Since 1889 the species has 

 been found sparingly nearly every winter, from December to March, in the 

 Fresh Pond Swamps and about the Lower Mystic Pond. It is seen occasionally 

 in sheltered places well within the suburbs of Cambridge. In the winter of 

 1 898-1 899 two birds frequented our garden during December and January, and 

 one of them remained through February and March, 



