RICE BUNTING. BI 
small height above the field, he chants out such a jingling medley 
of short, variable notes, uttered with such seeming confusion and 
rapidity, and continued for a considerable time, that it appears as if 
half a dozen birds of different kinds were all singing together. Some 
idea may be formed of this song by striking the high keys of a piano- 
forte at random, singly and quickly, making as many sudden contrasts 
of high and low notes as possible. Many of the tones are, in them- 
selves, charming ; but they succeed each other so rapidly, that the ear 
can hardly separate them. Nevertheless, the general effect is good; 
and, when ten or twelve are all singing on the same tree, the concert 
is singularly pleasing. I kept one of these birds for a long time, to 
observe its change of color. During the whole of April, May, and 
June, it sang almost continually. In the month of June, the color of 
the male begins to change, gradually assimilating to that of the female, 
and before the beginning of August it is difficult to distinguish the 
one from the other, both being then in the dress of Fig. 48. At this 
time, also, the young birds are so much like the female, or rather like 
both parents, and the males so different in appearance from what they 
were in spring, that thousands of people in Pennsylvania, to this day, 
persist in believing them to be a different species altogether; while 
others allow them, indeed, to be the same, but confidently assert that 
they are all females—none but females, according to them, returning 
in the fall; what becomes of the males they are totally at a loss to 
conceive. Even Mr. Mark Catesby, who resided for years in the coun- 
try they inhabit, and who, as he himself informs us, examined by dis- 
section great numbers of them in the fall, and repeated his experi- 
ment the succeeding year, lest he should have been mistaken, declares 
that he uniformly found them to be females. These assertions must 
appear odd to the inhabitants of the Eastern States, to whom the 
change of plumage in these birds is familiar, as it passes immediately 
under their eye; and also to those who, like myself, have kept thern 
in cages, and witnessed their gradual change of color.* That accu- 
rate observer, Mr. William Bartram, appears, from the following 
extract, to have taken notice of, or at least suspected, this change of 
color in these birds, more than forty years ago. “Being in Charles- 
ton,” says he, “in the month of June, I observed a cage full of Rice 
Birds, that is, of the yellow, or female color, who were very merry 
and vociferous, having the same variable music with the pied, or male 
bird, which I thought extraordinary, and, observing it to the gentle- 
man, he assured me that they were all of the male kind, taken the pre- 
ceding spring, but had changed their color, and would be next spring 
of the color of the pied, thus changing color with the seasons of the 
year. If this is really the case, it appears they are both of the same 
species intermixed, spring and fall.” Without, however, implicating 
the veracity of Catesby, who, I have no doubt, believed as he wrote, 
a few words will easily explain why he was deceived: The internal 
* The beautiful plumage of the male represented on the plate, is that during the 
breeding season, and is lost as soon as the duties incumbent thereon are completed. 
Tn this we have a eo analogy with some nearly allied African Fringillide. 
The genus Dolyconyx bas becn made by Mr. Swainson to contain this curious 
and interesting form: by that gentleman it is placed in the aberrant families of the 
Sturnidee. — Ep 
