SPECIES 11. FRINGILLA MAEITIMA. 
SEA-SIDE FINCH. 
[Plate XXXIV.— Fig. 2.] 
Op this bird I can find no description. It inhabits the low, 
rush-covered sea islands along our Atlantic coast, where I first 
found it; keeping almost continually within the boundaries of 
tide water, except when long and violent east or north-easterly 
storms, with high tides, compel it to seek the shore. On these 
occasions it courses along the margin, and among the holes and 
interstices of the weeds and sea-wrack, with a rapidity equalled 
only by the nimblest of our Sandpipers, and very much in their 
manner. At these times also it roosts on the ground, and runs 
about after dusk. 
This species derives its whole subsistence from the sea. I 
examined a great number of individuals by dissection, and found 
their stomachs universally filled with fragments of shrimps, 
minute shell fish, and broken limbs of small sea crabs. Its flesh, 
also, as was to be expected, tasted of fish, or was what is usually 
termed sedgy. Amidst the recesses of these wet sea marches 
it seeks the rankest growth of grass, and sea weed, and climbs 
along the stalks of the rushes with as much dexterity as it runs 
along the ground, which is rather a singular circumstance, 
most of our climbers being rather awkward at running. 
The Sea-side Finch is six inches and a quarter long, and eight 
and a quarter in extent; chin pure white, bordered on each side 
by a stripe of dark ash, proceeding from each base of the lower 
mandible, above that is another slight streak of white; from the 
nostril over the eye extends another streak which immediately 
over the lores is rich yellow, bordered above with white, and 
ending in yellow olive; crown brownish olive, divided laterally 
