FIELD SPARROW. 2 6$ 



The female of this species, which is here faithfully repre- 

 sented from a very beautiful living specimen, furnished by 

 a particular friend, is eleven inches long, and twenty-three 

 from tip to tip of the expanded wings. The cere and legs 

 are yellow ; bill, blue, tipt with black ; space round the eye, 

 greenish blue ; iris, deep dusky ; head, bluish ash ; crown, 

 rufous ; seven spots of black on a white ground surround the 

 head, in the manner represented in the figure ; whole upper 

 parts reddish bay, transversely streaked with black ; primary 

 and secondary quills, black, spotted on their inner vanes 

 with brownish white ; whole lower parts yellowish white, 

 marked with longitudinal streaks of brown, except the chin, 

 vent, and femoral feathers, which are white ; claws, black. 



The male of this species (which is an inch and a half 

 shorter, has the shoulder of the wings blue, and also the black 

 marks on the head, but is, in other respects, very differently 

 marked from the female) will appear in an early part of the 

 present work, with such other particulars as may be thought 

 worthy of communicating .* 



FIELD SPAKKOW.f (Fringitta pusilla.) 



PLATE XVI. -Fig. 2. 



Passer agrestis, Bartram, p. 291. — Peale's Museum, No. 6560. 



EMBEBIZA PUSILLA.— Jardine, Sw. MSS. 



Fringilla pusilla, Bonap. Synop. p. 110. 



This is the smallest of all our sparrows, and, in Pennsyl- 

 vania, is generally migratory. It arrives early in April, 

 frequents dry fields covered with long grass, builds a small 



* See description of male, and note, Vol. II. 



f The American bunting finches are most puzzling, the forms being 

 constantly intermediate, and never assuming the true type. Mr Swain- 

 son has also felt this, and has been obliged to form a new genus, to con- 

 tain one portion nearly inadmissible to any of the others. The present 

 species will rank as allied nearest to the reed bunting of Europe, E- 



