172 
RICE BUNTING. 
nest is fixed on the ground, generally in a field of grass; the 
outside is composed of dry leaves and coarse grass, the inside 
is lined with fine stalks of the same, laid in considerable quan- 
tity. The female lays five eggs, of a bluish white, marked with 
numerous irregular spots of blackish brown. The song of the 
male, while the female is sitting, is singular, and very agreea- 
ble. Mounting and hovering on wing, at a small height above 
the field, he chants out such a jingling medley of short varia- 
ble notes, uttered with such seeming confusion and rapidity, 
and continued for a considerable time, that it appears as if half 
a dozen birds of different kinds were all singing together. Some 
idea may be formed of this song by striking the high keys of a 
piano forte at random, singly, and quickly, making as many 
sudden contrasts of high and low notes as possible. Many of 
the tones are, in themselves, charming; but they succeed each 
other so rapidly that the ear can hardly separate them. Never- 
theless the general effect is good; and when ten or twelve are 
all singing on the same tree, the concert is singularly pleasing. 
I kept one of these birds for a long time, to observe its change 
of colour. During the whole of April, May, and June, it sang 
almost continually. In the month of June the colour of the 
male begins to change, gradually assimilating to that of the fe- 
male, and before the beginning of August it is difficult to distin- 
guish the one from the other, both being then in the dress of 
fig. 2. At this time, also, the young birds are so much like the 
female, or rather like both parents, and the males so different in 
appearance from what they were in spring, that thousands of 
people in Pennsylvania, to this day, persist in believing them 
to be a different species altogether. While others allow them in- 
deed to be the same, but confidently assert that they are all fe- 
males — none but females, according to them, returning in the 
fall; what becomes of the males they are totally at a loss to con- 
ceive. Even Mr. Mark Catesby, who resided for years in the 
country they inhabit, and who, as he himself informs us, exam- 
ined by dissection great numbers of them in the fall, and re- 
peated his experiment the succeeding year, lest he should have 
