BIRDS OF THE CAMBRIDGE REGION. 



295 



raspberry or blackberry bushes near farmhouses ; in barberry or hazel thickets 

 about the edges of remote fields and pastures ; and in young sprout growths 

 on the borders of woodland. Most of them depart for the south before the end 

 of August, but a few linger through September or even well into October. 



[Cyanospiza ciris (Linn.). Painted Bunting. Nonpareil. In Mr. Charles R. Lamb's 

 note-book I find the following entry under date of June 26, 1884 : "Today Frank Moulton shot a 

 male Nonpareil with his sling. It was hopping about in a tree in a yard at the corner of Ash 

 and Acacia Streets, Cambridge. It was in good condition and showed no signs of having been a 

 cage bird." About ten years later, on July 22, 1894, a male was seen at Mystic Pond by Mr. 

 Walter Faxon,i who writes me that the bird was "in brilliant plumage." 



As very many Nonpareils are or, at least, have been, brought alive to Massachusetts for sale, 

 and as the normal breeding range of the species is not known to extend to the northward of 

 North Carolina on the Atlantic coast, it is probable that both of the individuals just mentioned, 

 as well as the few others that have been noted in New England, were escaped cage birds.] 



177. Spiza americana (Gmel.). 

 ' DicKcissEL. Black-throated Bunting. 



Formerly a rare summer resident ; no record of recent occurrence. 



seasonal occurrence. 

 May 15 — September I (Nuttall). 



Nuttall's statement that the Black-throated Bunting was formerly "not 

 uncommon in this part of New England, dwelling here, however, almost exclu- 

 sively in the high, fresh meadows near the salt marshes,"^ related, no doubt, 

 chiefly to Cambridge. Indeed, Dr. Brewer has affirmed that "in 1833 and 1834 

 this bird was by no means uncommon in Cambridge in all the (then unoccupied) 

 region around the Botanical Garden and thence to West Cambridge and Charles- 

 town," ^ or in the very region on the confines of which Nuttall lived and about 

 the time his ' Manual ' was published. 



1 R. H. Howe, Jr., and G. M. Allen, Birds of Massachusetts, 1901, 136. 



2T. Nuttall, Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada. The Land Birds, 

 1832, 462. 



^T. M. Brewer, Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, III, 1878, 190. 



