130 



SNOW-BIRD. 



lively and familiar. They have also recourse, at this severe sea- 

 son, when the face of the earth is shut up from them, to the seeds 

 of many kinds of weeds that still rise above the snow, in corners 

 of fields, and low sheltered situations along the borders of creeks 

 and fences, where they associate with several species of Sparrows, 

 particularly those represented on the same plate. They are at 

 this time easily caught with almost any kind of trap; are gene- 

 rally fat, and, it is said, are excellent eating. 



I cannot but consider this bird as the most numerous of its 

 tribe of any within the United States. From the northern parts of 

 the district of Maine, to the Ogechee river in Georgia, a distance 

 by the circuitous route in which I travelled of more than 1800 

 miles, I never passed a day, and scarcely a mile, without seeing 

 numbers of these birds, and frequently large flocks of several thou- 

 sands. Other travellers with whom I conversed, who had come 

 from Lexington in Kentucky, thro Virginia, also declared that they 

 found these birds numerous along the whole road. It should be 

 observed, that the road sides are their favorite haunts, where many 

 rank weeds that grow along the fences furnish them with food, and 

 the road with gravel. In the vicinity of places where they were 

 most numerous I observed the small Hawk, represented in the 

 same plate, and several others of his tribe, watching their oppor- 

 timity, or hovering cautiously around, making an occasional sweep 

 among them, and retiring to the bare branches of an old cypress 

 to feed on their victim. In the month of April, when the weather 

 begins to be warm, they are observed to retreat to the woods ; and 

 to prefer the shaded sides of hills and thickets ; at which time the 

 males warble out a few very low sweet notes ; and are almost per- 

 petually pursuing and fighting with each other. About the twen- 

 tieth of April they take their leave of our humble regions, and 

 retire to the north, and to the high ranges of the Alleghany to build 

 their nests, and rear their young. In some of those ranges, in the 

 interior of Virginia, and northward about the waters of the west 



