204 THE BIRDS 
northern Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina, and west 
to western Iowa, eastern Kansas, and northwestern Texas; 
winters regularly from the Potomac and Ohio valleys south 
to the Gulf States, and north locally to the Great Lakes 
and southern Maine. 
A resident species the year round. Even though the 
day be bitter cold, if the sun is shining brightly its cheery 
song or whistle is heard floating across the field, only to 
be answered by another in some other direction. The 
warm days of spring, though, find them at their best; 
then it is the fields are literally alive with the resident 
and migratory birds, one answering the other in rapid 
succession. Unfortunately, they had long been considered 
game in this State, and while the law now prohibits the 
shooting of them, many are still killed for the table, as 
they are most abundant and easily shot during the winter 
months, when countless numbers of migratory birds are 
with us. As an article of food, though, they are not 
satisfactory, their flesh having a strong, rank taste. The 
nest is usually placed in a depression on the ground, 
amongst the thick grass, or broom-sedge. It is an exceed- 
ingly well-concealed affair of dry grasses, and arched over. 
Four to five eggs is a full set, a glossy-white, specked with 
purplish- and reddish-brown. Size, 1.10x.80. Fresh 
eges May 5th. It is considered a most beneficial bird to 
the agriculturist, its food being procured on the ground and 
consisting of insects, moths, caterpillars, spiders, grass- 
hoppers, worms, weed seeds and other forms of life 
injurious to crops, while the small amount of grain seed it 
eats amounts to a trifle compared to the good it does. 
Northern birds arrive in numbers October 10th to 20th, 
and go northward the middle of March. Two broods a 
season in this section is not a rarity, though one is the 
usual number raised. 
