FOX SPARROW. 165 



with clusters of dark purple berries. The asters and golden-rods are never more beau- 

 tiful than they are in October. The dry, hot summer has kept them back until the 

 cooler weather of September and October came, when all the waste places and wood- 

 lands were suddenly ablaze with gold and azure. The gorgeous New England aster* is 

 in its prime, its flowers varying from a soft rosy to a fine deep purple. Planted in good 

 garden soil it attains a height from five to six feet. The golden asters^ flower side by side 

 with rudbeckias, small sun-flowers and blazing stars', the last with rosy flowers on long 

 wand-like stems. In marshy jalaces the burr-marigold* with showy yellow flowers is 

 common. The little orchid, ladies' tresses^, with its spikes of deliciously sweet-scented 

 pure white flowers, is quite common in damp places. The deep green hollies*, mingUng 

 with these bright colors, make charming pictures. Mostly they grow in shrub-like form, 

 but fine dense trees, with the lower branches touching the ground and thickly set with 

 their bright scarlet berries, occur frequently, displaying a high degree of beauty. There 

 are spots here and there in these pine barrens at this season of such enchanting splendor, 

 that no words can do them justice.* 



Birds are at all times common in these woodlands, especially on the edges of 

 swamps, densely covered with shrubs, trees, and climbers. The Indigo Bunting, the 

 Field Sparrow, the Chewink, the White-eyed Vireo, the Chat, the Yellow Warbler, and, 

 more southward, also the beautiful Cardinal Redbird, are numerous summer sojourners 

 in the tangled masses of shrubs and trees. In fall all the thickets are swarming with 

 migrating birds, and in October Black Snowbirds or Juncos, Song and Swamp Spar- 

 rows, White-throated and White-crowned Sparrows are exceedingly common, enlivening 

 the bright-colored landscape everywhere with their presence. Among these fall migrants 

 the Fox Sparrow, a large and richly colored bird, is also common in the pine- 

 woods, where holly thickets and other evergreens afibrd it excellent shelter against its 

 many enemies and the inclemency of the weather. At this time the Fox Sparrows 

 move in small scattered flocks. They are also observed in localities where other 

 members of the tribe occur, though they never mingle with them. I have found them 

 common in October in Wisconsin and Illinois. A little later they made their appearance 

 in south-western Missouri, and by the middle and towards the end of November I 

 met with them in south-eastern Texas, where they frequented throughout the winter the 

 thickets and the dense undergrowth of the margins of woodlands, retreating during 

 cold weather and in case of danger into the interior where the underwood was denser 

 and more tangled. During the migration and also in their winter-quarters the little 

 flocks are skulkers, but are easily startled by throwing a stick into the thicket, when 

 they rise with quite a whirring of the wings and a musical twitter. It is surprising how 

 many different kinds of birds are sometimes found assembled in such a thicket. Cardinals, 

 Towhees, Brown Thrashers, Song and Swamp Sparrows, Lincoln's Sparrows, White- 

 crowned and White-throated Sparrows, Juncos, Field Sparrows, Wrens, Chippies, and 

 even Chats and other Warblers left the thickets near the Buffalo Bayou or near the 

 West Yegua and Bluff" Creek in Texas, when I forced my way through them. The Fox 



J Astet Novie-Angliae. 2 Chrysopsis Mariana and Ch. falcata. 3 L,iairis spicata and L. graminifolia. * Bideus. 

 » Spiranthes cerniia. ' J lex opaca. 



* Compare "October in the Pints" by Mrs. Mary Treat. "Garden and Forest," 1890, p. 524; 1893, p. 443, 



