RICE BUNTING. 
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of the male, while the female is sitting, is singular, and very 
agreeable. Mounting and hovering on wing, at a small height 
above the field, he chants out such a jingling medley of short, 
variable 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. Nevertheless 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 female, and before the 
beginning of August it is difficult to distinguish 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, indeed, 
to be the same, but confidently assert that they are all females 
— none but females, according to them, returning in the fall; 
what becomes of the males they are totally at a loss to conceive. 
Even Mr Mark Catesby, who resided for years in the country 
they inhabit, and who, as he himself informs us, examined by 
dissection great numbers of them in the fall, and repeated his 
experiment the succeeding year, lest he should have been 
mistaken, declares that he uniformly found them to be females. 
These assertions must appear odd to the inhabitants of the 
eastern states, to whom the change of plumage in these birds 
is familiar, as it passes immediately under their eye ; and also 
