RICE BUNTING. 
221 
quantity. 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 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 rapi- 
dity, 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 he 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 ; hut they suc- 
ceed 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 assimi- 
lating to that of the female, and, before the beginning 
of August, it is difficult to distinguish the one from the 
other. 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 he 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, return- 
ing 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 he females. These assertions must appear odd to 
