ACADIAN SHARP-TAILED SPARROW. 345 



These birds are not rare, though not so numerous as the Sea- 

 side Sparrow, with which they commonly associate. 



These Finches frequent the water, and walk on the floating 

 weeds as if on the land ; throughout the winter they remain 

 gregarious till spring, when they separate for the purpose of 

 breeding. They are almost silent, a single fweef being now 

 all they are heard to utter ; and even in the spring, so defec- 

 tive are they in melody that their notes are scarcely worthy 

 the name of a song. They nest on the ground, amid the short 

 marsh-grass near the line of high- water mark ; a slight hollow 

 is made, and then lined with delicate grass. They raise two 

 broods in the season in the Middle States. 



" Sharp-tails " have been traced north to Prince Edward's Island, 

 but in 1887 Mr. Jonathan D wight, Jr., discovered that true Cauda- 

 cutus had not been taken beyond Portsmouth, N. H., the birds 

 found to the northward of that point being a distinct variety, which 

 he named subvirgatus. 



ACADIAN SHARP-TAILED SPARROW. 



Ammodramus caudacutus subvirgatus. 



Char. " Similar in size and coloring to A. caudacutus, but paler and 

 much less conspicuously streaked beneath with pale greenish gray instead 

 of black or deep brown. Bill averages smaller. Compared with nelsoni 

 it is much paler and grayer, generally larger, and with a longer bill " 

 (Dwight). 



Nest and Eggs are not known to differ from those of true caudacutus. 



\ 



The habitat of this newly discovered sub-species, or, rather, the 

 limit of its range, has not yet been determined. Mr. Dwight gives 

 it as " Marshes of southern New Brunswick, Prince Edward's 

 Island, and probably Nova Scotia, and southward in migration 

 along the Atlantic coast." In habits the present bird differs from 

 caudacutus in frequenting fresh-water marshes and dry meadows 

 on the margins of inland streams. 



The song of this bird — if its few wheezy notes deserve such 

 recognition — is a rather ludicrous effort, and suggests a bad cold 

 in the head. Mr. Dwight represents it by the syllables Itc-se-e- 

 e-e-oop. All I remember having heard from the specimens I 

 encountered is the seS-e-e-e-oop, delivered with apparent effort, as 

 if choking. 



