SNOW-BIRD. 
Ill 
This species may easily be distinguished from the four preceding 
ones, by his black bill and frontlet, and by his familiarity in summer; 
yet, in the month of August and September, when they moult, the black 
on the front and partially on the bill disappears. The young are also 
without the black during the first season. 
The Chipping Sparrow is five inches and a quarter long, and eight 
inches in extent ; frontlet black ; chin and line over the eye whitish ; crown, 
chestnut; breast and sides of the neck pale ash; bill in winter black, in 
summer the lower mandible flesh colored; rump dark ash; belly and vent 
white ; back variegated with black and bright bay ; wings black, broadly 
edged with bright chestnut ; tail dusky, forked, and slightly edged with 
pale ochre ; legs and feet a pale flesh color. The female differs in having 
less black on the frontlet, and the bay duller. Both lose the black 
front in moulting. 
Species VII. FRINGILLA HUDSONIA* 
SNOW-BIRD. 
[Plate XVI. Fig. 6.] 
Fringilla Eudsonia, Turton, Si/st. i., 568. — Emberiza hyemalis, Id. 531. — Lath, i., 
66. — Catesby, i., 36. — Arct. Zool. p. 359, No. 223. — Passer nivalis, Bartram, p. 
291. 
This well known species, small and insignificant as it may appear, is 
by far the most numerous, as well as the most extensively disseminated, 
of all the feathered tribes that visit us from the frozen regions of the 
north. Their migrations extending from the Arctic Circle, and pro- 
bably beyond it, to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, spreading over 
the whole breadth of the United States from the Atlantic Ocean to 
Louisiana ; how rrrach farther westward I am unable to say. About the 
twentieth of October they make their first appearance in those parts of 
Pennsylvania east of the Alleghany Mountains. At first they are most 
generally seen on the borders of woods among the falling and decayed 
leaves, in loose flocks of thirty or forty together, always taking to the 
trees when disturbed. As the weather sets in colder they approach 
nearer the farm-house and villages ; and on the appearance of what is 
usually called falling weather, assemble in larger flocks, and seem 
doubly diligent in searching for food. This increased activity is gene- 
rally a sure prognostic of a storm. When deep snow covers the ground 
* Fringilla hyemalis, Linn. Syst. Ed. 10, i., p. 183, 30. 
