SEA- SIDE FINCH. 
69 
or northeasterly 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 marshes, 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 by a stripe of slate blue, or 
fine light ash ; breast, ash, streaked with buff ; belly, white 
vent, buff coloured, and streaked with black; upper parts of 
the back, wings, and tail, a yellowish brown olive, intermixed 
with very pale blue ; greater and lesser coverts, tipt with dull 
white ; edge of the bend of the wing, rich yellow ; primaries 
edged with the same immediately below their coverts ; tail, 
cuneiform, olive brown, centered with black; bill, dusky 
above, pale blue below, longer than is usual with Finches ; 
legs and feet, a pale bluish white ; irides, hazel. Male and 
female nearly alike in colour. 
