OF NEW ENGLAND. 215 
involuntarily learned to associate them with a winter’s after- 
noon drawing to its close, a clear sunset, with perhaps dark 
clouds above, and a rising north-west wind, which sweeps 
across the fields, to warn us of to-morrow’s cold. The almost 
mournful chip of these birds, as they fly to their nightly rest, 
has always seemed to me a fitting accompaniment for such a 
scene. 
s 
(C) pPusittus. Field Sparrow. 
(A common summer-resident in Massachusetts, frequenting 
pasture-lands and the ‘‘scrub.”) 
(a). 5iincheslong. (‘Bill pale reddish.”) Crown, rufous- 
red. Sides of the head vaguely marked. Interscapulars, bright 
bay, black-streaked, with pale edging (or rarely none). Rump, 
median, unmarked. Tail, dusky-black; feathers pale-edged. 
Wings (as in borealis, and) with two inconspicuous white wing- 
bars. Beneath, white; breast and sides distinctly washed with 
brown. (Line dividing the crown, and nuchal patch, both 
faintly ashy, or wanting.) 
(b). The nest is placed on the ground or in a low bush, in 
my own neighborhood generally the latter, and in a field, a 
pasture, or the scrub-land. When placed in a bush, it is us- 
ually composed of fine straws, and sometimes fine twigs also, 
and is occasionally lined with horse-hairs, which is nearly 
always the case when it is on the ground. Each set of eggs, 
two sets being often laid in a season, of which the first appears 
here in the last week of May, consists of four or five eggs, 
which average about ‘70°50 of an inch, and are white (gray- 
tinged), with scattered spots of light, almost flesh-colored, red- 
dish-brown, which are rarely so confluent as nearly to conceal 
the ground-color. 
(c). The Field Sparrows, though quite common here in sum- 
mer, are not so generally well known as they deserve to be. 
Though found in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, yet 
Massachusetts is the most northern of the New England States 
in which they are common. In spring they come to the 
neighborhood of Boston in the latter part of April, at about 
