BIRDS OF TI-iE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 2815 



in the older settled portions of the city, even at its seasons of migration. As 

 lately as June, 1902, however, a pair reared young in the Botanic Garden. Dur- 

 ing that same summer I found a number of birds breeding in a brook meadow 

 on the Joseph Coolidge farm between Elmwood and the Cambridge Cemetery, 

 and a few others in Mount Auburn. 



Song Sparrows winter regularly in the Fresh Pond Swamps, where they 

 appear to find congenial shelter and abundant food during the coldest weather 

 and the deepest snows. In the earlier years of my experience it was unusual 

 to note more than two or three there at any one time, but now we often see a 

 dozen or more in the course of a single morning. They are almost equally 

 numerous in a bushy swamp at the outlet of the Lower Mystic Pond. I have 

 known single birds to pass the months of January and February in gardens 

 near my home in Cambridge, as well as in certain briery thickets which formerly 

 bordered the Charles River Marshes between the Cambridge Cemetery and the 

 Watertown Arsenal. 



170. Melospiza lincolnii (Aud.) . 

 Lincoln's Sparrow. Lincoln's Finch. 



Not uncommon transient visitor in spring and autumn. 



seasonal occurrence. 



May 7, l8g6, one seen, Lower Mystic Pond, W. Faxon. 



May 15 — 25. 

 June I, 1875, one ad. female 1 taken, Pine Swamp, W. Brewster. 



September 12, 1870, one taken, Cambridge, H. W. Hensliaw. 



September 14 — October 10. 

 November i, i8g8, one seen, Belmont, R. Hoffmann^ and W. Faxon. 



Lincoln's Sparrow is one of the most unobtrusive and inconspicuous of 

 birds. Timid and retiring by nature, it spends the greater part of its time in 

 dense thickets, where it rambles about on the ground, searching for food among 

 the fallen leaves. It has a positive genius for skulking, and if once thoroughly 

 startled is most difficult to follow, for it sUnks off quickly and noiselessly, gliding, 



'No. 150, collection of William Brewster. 

 2 R. Hoffmann, Auk, XVI, 1899, 196. 



