SPECIES 2. EMBERIZA ERYTHROPHTHALMA. 
TOWHE BUNTING. 
[Plate X. — Fig. 5. Male.] 
Fringilla erythrophthalma, LmN.Syst.p. 318, 6. — Le Pinson de la 
Caroline, Briss. Orn. iii, p. 169, 44. — Buff. Ois. iv, p. 141. — 
Lath, ii, p. 199, JVb. 43. — Catesb. Car. i, PL 34. — Peale’s 
Museum, JSTo. 5970. 
This is a very common, but humble and inoffensive species, 
frequenting close sheltered thickets, where it spends most of its 
time in scratching up the leaves for worms, and for the larvae 
and eggs of insects. It is far from being shy, frequently suffer- 
ing a person to walk round the bush or thicket where it is at 
work, without betraying any marks of alarm ; and when disturb- 
ed, uttering the notes Towhe, repeatedly. At times the male 
mounts to the top of a small tree, and chants his few simple 
notes for an hour at a time. These are loud, not unmusical, 
something resembling those of the Yellow-hammer of Britain, 
but more mellow, and more varied. He is fond of thickets with 
a southern exposure, near streams of water, and where there is 
plenty of dry leaves; and is found, generally, over the whole 
United States. He is not gregarious, and you seldom see more 
than two together. About the middle or twentieth of April 
they arrive in Pennsylvania, and begin building about the first 
week in May. The nest is fixed on the ground among the dry 
leaves, near, and sometimes under, a thicket of hriars, and is large 
and substantial. The outside is formed of leaves and pieces of 
grape-vine bark, and the inside of fine stalks of dry grass, the 
cavity completely sunk beneath the surface of the ground, and 
sometimes half covered above with dry grass or hay. The eggs 
are usually five, of a pale flesh colour, thickly marked with specks 
