78 MARYLAND YELLOW-THROAT. 



This plant, vulgarly named Pheasant's-eye, grows in Louisiana and 

 Europe in the cornfields. It has an erect, branched stem, with copiously 

 pinnatifid, alternate, sessile, dark green leaves, the segments of which are 

 linear and acute, and deep crimson flowers, having a black spot near the 

 claw of each of the petals, which vary from six to ten. 



MARYLAND YELLOW-THROAT. 



^Trichas mabilandica, Linn. 

 PLATE CII. — Male, Female, and Young Male. 



The notes of this little bird render it more conspicuous than most of its 

 genus, for although they cannot be called very musical, they are far from 

 being unpleasant, and are uttered so frequently during the day, that one, in 

 walking along the briary ranges of the fences, is almost necessarily brought 

 to listen to its whitititee, repeated three or four times every five or six 

 minutes, the bird seldom stopping expressly to perform its music, but merely 

 uttering the notes after it has picked an insect from amongst the leaves of 

 the low bushes which it usually inhabits. It then hops a step or two up or 

 down, and begins again. 



Although timid, it seldom flies far off at the approach of man, but instantly 

 dives into the thickest parts of its favourite bushes and high grass, where it 

 continues searching for food either along the twigs, or among the dried leaves 

 on the ground, and renews its little song when only a few feet distant. 



Its nest is one of those which the Cow Bunting, Molothrus {Icterus) 

 pecoris, selects, in which to deposit one of its eggs, to be hatched by the 

 owners, that bird being similar in this respect to the European Cuckoo. 

 The nest, which is placed on the ground, and partly sunk in it, is now and 

 then covered over in the form of an oven, from which circumstance children 

 name this warbler the Oven-bird. It is composed externally of withered 

 leaves and grass, and is lined with hair. The eggs are from four to six, of a 

 white colour, speckled with light brown, and are deposited about the middle 

 of May. Sometimes two broods are reared in a season. I have never 

 observed the egg of the Cow Bunting in the nests of the second brood. It 



