202 
PAINTED BUNTING. 
cage, stretching out their heads through the wires with eager 
expectation, evidently much interested in the issue of their suc- 
cess. 
These birds arrive in Louisiana from the south about the mid- 
dle 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 exte- 
riorly 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 coloured, 
marked with purplish brown specks. As some of these nests 
had eggs so late as the twenty-fifth of J une, I think it probable 
that they sometimes raise two broods in the same season. The 
young birds of both sexes, during the first season, are of a fine 
green olive above, and dull yellow below. The females under- 
go little or no change, but that of becoming of a more brownish 
cast. The males, on the contrary, are long and slow in arriving 
at their full variety of colours. In the second season the blue 
on the head begins to make its appearance, intermixed with 
the olive green. The next year the yellow shows itself on 
the back and rump ; and also the red, in detached spots, on the 
throat and lower parts. All these colours are completed in the 
fourth season, except, sometimes, that the green still continues 
on the tail. On the fourth and fifth season the bird has attained 
his complete colours, and appears then as represented in the plate 
(fig. 1). No dependance, however, can be placed on the regulari- 
ty of this change in birds confined in a cage, as the want of proper 
food, sunshine, and variety of climate, all conspire against the 
regular operations of nature. 
The Nonpareil is five inches and three quarters long, and 
eight inches and three quarters in extent; head, neck above, 
and sides of the same, a rich purplish blue; eyelid, chin, and 
whole lower parts, vermilion; back and scapulars glossy yellow, 
stained with rich green, and in old birds with red; lesser wing 
