THE PERCHING BirRDs. III 
“Tts favorite haunts while with us,’ remarks Wilson, “are about 
gardens, fields of deep clover, the borders of woods, and roadsides, 
where it is frequently seen perched on the fences. In its manners 
it is extremely active and neat, and a vigorous and pretty good 
songster. It mounts to the highest tops of a large tree, and chants 
for half an hour at atime. Its song is not one continued strain, but 
a repetition of short notes, commencing loud and rapid, and falling 
by almost imperceptible gradations for six or eight seconds, till they 
seem hardly articulate, as if the little minstrel were quite exhausted ; 
and after a pause of half a minute or less, commences again as be- 
fore. Some of our birds sing only in spring, and then chiefly in the 
morning, being comparatively mute during the heat of noon; but 
the Indigo-bird chants with as much animation under the meridian 
sun in the month of July as in the month of May, and continues his 
song, occasionally, to the middle or end of August.’ 
In the South and West are found the Varied, Laz- 
uli, Beautiful, and Painted Buntings, all belonging to 
the genus Passerina, of which our Indigo-bird is the 
Northern representative. They are all more beau- 
tiful birds than the one we have treated of, but in gen- 
eral habits much the same, the song even having a 
strong family resemblance, and no one much the 
superior of the others. Occasionally a “ straggler” 
Painted Bunting has been reported as found “ wild” 
in Pennsylvania. One of these, I am positive, was an 
escaped cage-bird. 
The Black-throated Bunting, or “ Dickcissal,” ends 
the sparrow series, but because last is by no means 
least. In 1873 I spent several months in a house in 
Central New Jersey beside which was an open lot. 
There was some grass and more weeds growing in 
it. For convenience, I adopted the lazy man’s plan 
of making a short cut across this open space, and 
before I had worn much of a path I found that the 
