ACADIAN SHARP-TAILED SPARROW. 
345 
These birds are not rare, though not so numerous as the Sea- 
side Sparrow, with which they commonly associate. 
These Finches frequent the water, and walk on the floating 
weeds as if on the land ; throughout the winter they remain 
gregarious till spring, when they separate for the purpose of 
breeding. They are almost silent, a single tweet being now 
all they are heard to utter ; and even in the spring, so defec- 
tive are they in melody that their notes are scarcely worthy 
the name of a song. They nest on the ground, amid the short 
marsh-grass near the line of high-water mark ; a slight hollow 
is made, and then lined with delicate grass. They raise two 
broods in the season in the Middle States. 
“ Sharp-tails” have been traced north to Prince Edward’s Island, 
but in 1887 Mr. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., discovered that true cauda- 
cutus had not been taken beyond Portsmouth, N. H., the birds 
found to the northward of that point being a distinct variety, which 
he named subvirgatus. 
ACADIAN SHARP-TAILED SPARROW. 
Ammodramus caudacutus subvirgatus. 
Char. “ Similar in size and coloring to A. caudacutus, but paler and 
much less conspicuously streaked beneath with pale greenish gray instead 
of black or deep brown. Bill averages smaller. Compared with nehoni 
it is much paler and grayer, generally larger, and with a longer bill ” 
(Dwight). 
Nest and Eggs are not known to differ from those of true caudacutus. 
The habitat of this newly discovered sub-species, or, rather, the 
limit of its range, has not yet been determined. Mr. Dwight gives 
it as “Marshes of southern New Brunswick, Prince Edward’s 
Island, and probably Nova Scotia, and southward in migration 
along the Atlantic coast.” In habits tlie present bird differs from 
caudacutus in frequenting fresh-water marshes and dry meadows 
on the margins of inland streams. 
The song of this bird — if its few wheezy notes deserve such 
recognition — is a rather ludicrous effort, and suggests a bad cold 
in the head. Mr. Dwight represents it by the syllables Itc-se-e- 
e-e-oop- All I remember having heard from the specimens I 
encountered is the see-e-e-e-oop, delivered with apparent effort, as 
if choking. 
