70 PAINTED BUNTING. 



bled at the front of the cage, stretching out their heads through the 

 wires with eager expectation, evidently much interested in the issue 

 of their success. 



These birds arrive in Louisiana from the south about the 

 middle of April, and begin to build early in May. In Savannah^ 

 according to Mr. Abbot, they arrive about the twentieth of ApriL 

 Their nests are usually fixed in orange hedges, or on the lower 

 branches of the orange tree ; I have also found them in a common 

 bramble or blackberry bush. They are formed exteriorly of dry 

 grass, intermingled with the silk of caterpillars, lined with hair, and 

 lastly with some extremely fine roots of plants. The eggs are four 

 or five, white, or rather pearl colored, marked with purplish brown 

 specks. As some of these nests had eggs so late as the twenty- 

 fifth of June, I think it probable that they sometimes raise two 

 brood in the same season. The young birds of both sexes, during 

 the first season, are of a fine green olive above, and dull yellow 

 below. The females undergo little or no change, but that of be- 

 coming of a more brownish cast. The males, on the contrary, are 

 long and slow in arriving at their full variety of colors. In the 

 second season the blue on the head begins to make its appearance, 

 intermixed with the olive green. The next year the yellow shews 

 itself on the back and rump; and also the red, in detached spots, 

 on the throat and lower parts. All these colors are completed 

 in the fourth season, except, sometimes, that the green still conti- 

 nues on the tail. On the fourth and fifth season the bird has at- 

 tained his complete colors, and appears then as represented in the 

 plate (fig. 1.). No dependance, however, can be placed on the re- 

 gularity of this change in birds confined in a cage, as the want of 

 proper food, sunshine, and variety of climate, all conspire against 

 the regular operations of nature. 



The Nonpareil is five inches and three quarters long, and 

 eight inches and three quarters in extent ; head, neck above, and 

 sides of the same, a rich purplish blue ; eyelid, chin, and whole 



