JO SEA-SIDE FINCH. 



This species derives its whole subsistence from the sea. I 

 examined a great number of individuals by dissection, and 

 found their stomachs universally filled with fragments of 

 shrimps, minute shell-fish, and broken limbs of small sea 

 crabs. Its flesh, also, as was to be expected, tasted offish, or 

 was what is usually termed sedgy. Amidst the recesses of 

 these wet sea marshes, it seeks the rankest growth of grass 

 and sea weed, and climbs along the stalks of the rushes with 

 as much dexterity as it runs along the ground, which is rather 

 a singular circumstance, most of our climbers being rather 

 awkward at running. 



The sea-side finch is six inches and a quarter long, and 

 eight and a quarter in extent ; chin, pure white, bordered 

 on each side by a stripe of dark ash, proceeding from each 

 base of the lower mandible ; above that is another slight 

 streak of white; from the nostril over the eye extends another 

 streak, which immediately over the lores is rich yellow, bor- 

 dered above with white, and ending in yellow olive; crown, 

 brownish olive, divided laterally by a stripe of slate blue, or 

 fine light ash; breast, ash, streaked with buff; belly, white; 

 vent, buff coloured, and streaked with black ; upper parts of 

 the back, wings, and tail, a yellowish brown olive, intermixed 

 with very pale blue ; greater and lesser coverts, tipt with dull 

 white ; edge of the bend of the wing, rich yellow ; primaries 

 edged with the same immediately below their coverts ; tail, 

 cuneiform, olive brown, centered with black ; bill, dusky 

 above, pale blue below, longer than is usual with finches ; 

 legs and feet, a pale bluish white ; irides, hazel. Male and 

 female nearly alike in colour. 



