68 



SEA-SIDE FINCH, 

 FRINGILLA MARITIMA, 

 [Plate XXXIV.— Fig. 2.] 



OF this bird I can find no description. It inhabits the low, 

 rush-covered sea islands along our Atlantic coast, where I first 

 found it ; keeping almost continually within the boundaries of tide 

 water, except when long and violent east or north-easterly storms, 

 with high tides, compel it to seek the shore. On these occasions 

 it courses along the margin, and among the holes and interstices 

 of the weeds and sea-wrack, with a rapidity equalled only by the 

 nimblest of our Sandpipers, and very much in their manner. At 

 these times also it roosts on the ground, and runs about after dusk. 



This species derives its whole subsistence from the sea. I exa- 

 mined 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 of fish, 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 tlie 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, bordered above with white, and ending in 

 yellow olive; crown brownish olive, divided laterally by a stripe 



