14 BOHEMIAN WAX-WING. 
or in over-populous countries ? or shall we suppose that they are 
forced by local penury to seek elsewhere the food they cannot 
be supplied with at home? Much light may be thrown on the 
subject by carefully observing their habits and migrations in 
America. 
The Bohemian Chatterer being so well known, we shall here 
only give a description of our best American specimen, which is 
a female shot on the 20th March 1825, on the Athabasca river, 
near the Rocky Mountains. The sexes hardly differ in plumage. 
Length eight and a half inches; extent fifteen; bill three 
quarters of an inch long, black, paler at the base of the under 
mandible; irides reddish, often quite red: nostrils entirely un¬ 
covered. From the base of the ridge of the bill, arises on each 
side a velvetty black line, bordering the forehead, and spreading on 
the opthalmic region, and surrounding almost the whole crown; 
throat also deep black. The anterior part of the head is bright 
bay, behind passing gradually into vinaceous drab; the feathers 
of the crown are elongated into a crest measuring nearly an inch 
and a half; base of these feathers blackish, middle white, whole 
neck and hind head and breast cinereous drab, slightly tinged 
with vinaceous, and passing by degrees on the posterior parts 
above and beneath into pure cinereous, slightly tinged with bluish, 
which predominates on the rump and upper tail-coverts. The 
black of the throat is somewhat margined with bright bay, and 
is separated from the black of the eye by a slight obliterated 
white line. The cinereous of the belly and femorals is paler; the 
vent and lower tail-coverts are chesnut rufous, and the feathers 
very long. The wings measure four and a half inches in length, 
the second primary is somewhat longer than the first, the others 
decreasing in succession rapidly. The upper tail-coverts are 
cinereous drab, like the back, the lower whitish-gray, quills 
dusky black, much paler on their inner vane towards the base. 
