TOWHE BUNTING. 121 
exactly to those of the Woodpecker, passing up the hind head, and 
reaching to the base of the upper mandible. These observations 
were verified in five different subjects, all of whose stomachs con- 
tained fragments of insects, and some of them whole ones. 
TOWHE BUNTING.—EMBERIZA ERYTHROPTHALMA. — 
Fic. 42. 
Fringilla erythropthalma, Linn. Syst. p. 318, 6.— Le Pinson de la Caroline, Briss 
Orn. iii. p. 169, 44. — Buff. Ois. iv. p. 141. — Lath. ii. p. 199, No. 43. — Catesh. 
Car. i. plate 34. — Peale’s Musewm, No. 5970. 
PIPILO ERYTHROPTHALMA. — Vixt.uot. 
Pipilo erythropthalma, Vieil’. Gal. des Ois. plate Baap erythropthalma, 
Bonap. Synop. p. 112.— The Towhe Bunting, Aud. plate 29, male and female ; 
Orn. Biog. i. p. 150. 
Tus is a very common, but humble and inoffensive species, fre- 
quenting close-sheltered thickets, where it spends most of its time in 
scratching up the leaves for worms, and for the larve and eggs of 
insects. It is far from being shy, frequently suffering a person to 
walk round the bush or thicket, where it is at work, without betraying 
any marks of alarm, and when disturbed, uttering the notes tow-he 
repeatedly. At times the male mounts to the top of a small tree, and 
chants his few, simple notes for an hour at atime. These are loud, 
not unmusical, something resembling those of the Yellow Hammer 
of Britain, but more mellow and more varied. He is fond of thickets 
with a southern exposure, near streams of water, and where there is 
plenty of dry leaves; and is found, generally, over the whole United 
States. He is not gregarious, and you seldom see more than two 
together. About the middle or 20th of April, they arrive in Penn- 
sylvania, and begin building about the first week in May. The nest 
is fixed on the ground among the dry leaves, near, and sometimes 
under, a thicket of briers, and is large and substantial. The outside 
is formed of leaves and dry pieces of grape-vine bark, and the inside, 
of fine stalks of dried grass, the cavity completely sunk beneath the 
surface of the ground, and sometimes half covered above with dry 
grass or hay. The eggs are usually five, of a pale flesh color, 
thickly marked with specks of rufous, most numerous near the great 
end. The young are produced about the beginning of Jur:, 
and a second brood commonly succeeds in the same season. "ais 
bird rarely winters north of the state of Maryland, retiring trom 
Pennsylvania to the south about the 12th of October. Yet in the 
middle districts of Virginia, and thence south to Florida, I found it 
abundant during the months of January, February, and March. Its 
usual food is obtained by scratching up the leaves; it also feeds, like 
the rest of its tribe, on various hard seeds and gravel, but rarely 
commits any depredations on the harvest of the husbandman, gener- 
1] 
