178 SNOW BIRD. 
and pick up the crumbs that were thrown to him. This sociable 
habit, which continues chiefly during the summer, is a singular char- 
acteristic. ‘Towards the end of summer he takes to the fields and 
hedges, until the weather becomes severe, with snow, when he departs 
for the south. - : ee oe 
The Chipping Bird builds his nest most commonly in‘a cedar bush, 
and lines it thickly with cow hair. The female lays four or five eggs, 
of a light blue color, with a few dots of purplish black near the great 
end. : - , : 
“This species may easily be distinguished from the four preceding 
ones by his black bill and frontlet, and by his familiarity in summer ; 
yet, in the months of August. and September, when they moult their 
feathers, the black on the front, and partially on the bill, disappears. 
The young are also without the black during the first season. 
The Chipping Sparrow is five inches and a quarter long, and eight 
inches in extent; frontlet, black; chin, and line over the eye, whitish ; 
crown, chestnut; breast- and sides of the neck, pale ash; bill, in win- 
‘ter, black; in summer, the lower mandible flesh colored; rump, dark 
ash; belly and vent, white; back, variegated with black and bright 
bay; wings, black, broadly edged with bright chestnut; tail, dusky, 
forked, and slightly edged with pale ochre ; legs and feet, a pale flesh 
color. The female differs in having less black on the frontlet, and the 
bay duller. Both lose the black front in moulting. 
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“SNOW BIRD.—FRINGILLA HUDSONIA.* — Fic. 76. 
Fringilla Hudsonia, Turton, Syst. i. 568. — Emberiza hyemalis, Id.531.— Lath. 1. 
66. — Catesb. i. 36.— Arct. Zool. p. 359, No. 223. — Passer nivalis, Bartram, 
p. 291. — Peale’s Museum, No. 6532. 
FRINGILLA HYEMALIS, — Linnzvs. 
Fringilla hyemalis, Bonap. Synop. p. 109. — North. Zool. ii. p. 259.— The Snow 
Bird, Aud. pl. 13, Orn. Biog. i. p. 72. , 
Tuts well-known species, small and insignificant as it may appear, 
is. by far the most numerous, as well as the most extensively dissemi- 
nated, of all the feathered tribes that visit us from the frozen regions 
of the north, — their migrations extending from the arctic circle, and, 
probably, beyond it, to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, spreading 
over the whole breadth of the United States, from the Atlantic Ocean 
to Louisiana ; how much farther westward, I am unable tosay. About 
the 20th of October, they make their first appearance’ in those parts ef 
Pennsylvania east of the Alleghany Mountains, At first they are 
most generally seen on the borders of woods among the.falling and 
decayed leaves, in loose flocks of thirty or forty together, always 
taking to the trees when disturbed. As the weather sets in colder, 
'* Nivalis of first edition. 
