8b 
PAINTED BUNTING. 
cage bird they have. The negroes often bring them to market from the 
neighboring plantations, for sale ; either in cages, taken in traps, or in 
the nest. A wealthy French planter, who lives on the banks of the 
Mississippi, a few miles below Bai/o Fourche, took me into his garden, 
which is spacious and magnificent, to show me his aviary ; where, among 
many of our common birds, I observed several Nonpareils, two of which 
had nests, and were then hatching. 
Were the same attention bestowed on these birds as on the Canary, I 
have no doubt but they would breed with equal facility, and become 
equally numerous and familiar, while the richness of their plumage 
might compensate for their inferiority of song. Many of them have 
been transported to Europe ; and I think I have somewhere read that in 
Holland attempts have been made to breed them and with success. 
When the employments of the people of the United States become more 
sedentary, like those of Europe, the innocent and agreeable amusement 
of keeping and rearing birds in this manner, will become more general 
than it is at present, and their manners better known. And I cannot 
but think, that an intercourse with these little innocent warblers is 
favorable to delicacy of feeling, and sentiments of humanity ; for I 
have observed the rudest and most savage softened into benevolence 
while contemplating the interesting manners of these inoffensive little 
creatures. 
Six of these birds, which I brought with me from New Orleans by 
sea, soon became reconciled to the cage. In good weather the males 
sung with great sprightliness, though they had been caught only a few 
days before my departure. They were greedily fond of flies, which 
accompanied us in great numbers during the whole voyage ; and many 
of the passengers amused themselves with catching these and giving 
them to the Nonpareils ; till at length the birds became so well 
acquainted with this amusement, that as soon as they perceived any of 
the people attempting to catch flies, they assembled at the front of the 
cage, stretching out their heads through the wires with eager expecta- 
tion, 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 some- 
times raise two broods in the same season. The young birds of both 
