Sept (To Oct)
15 to Oct. 5.
Nest, generally similar to that of M. fasciata, on the ground. "Eggs, four to five, pale green or buffish, sometimes almost white, thickly spotted and blotched with reddish brown and lilac, 80 × 60" (Chamberlain). The most striking characteristic about the Lincoln's Sparrow is its shyness, whether migrating in the lavish abundance of the west, straying casually through the States of the Atlantic seaboard, or settled for the summer in a chosen spot of the northern evergreen woods. Scampering like a mouse along some tumble-down stone wall half buried in poison ivy, sumach, and all the tangled growth that goes to make up an old hedgerow, or peering out from a clump of lowspreading bushes, this little bird may sometimes be detected; but as he hurries northward late in the migration, when all the woods and fields are ringing with bird music, our attention is seldom directed FINCHES, SPARROWS, ETC. toward the silent straggler, while in the autumn he is lost in the waves of Sparrows that flood the country.
If we follow him northward, we find him irregularly distributed in small colonies or single pairs in damp clearings, perhaps along brooks or ponds, but avoiding almost entirely the wetter, more open localities, where the Swamp Sparrow is at home. Attracted by a sharp chirp which, at times reduplicated, resembles that of a young Chipping Sparrow, we may succeed in catching a glimpse of him as he lurks beneath a little spruce perhaps no bigger than an umbrella. Sometimes venturing timidly to the outer boughs of a spruce, he surprises the hearer with a most unsparrowlike song. It is not loud, and suggests the bubbling, guttural notes of the House Wren, combined with the sweet rippling music of the Purple Finch, and when you think the song is done there is an unexpected aftermath. The birds sing very little and at long intervals, and are seldom heard during the later hours of the day, ceasing at once if anybody approaches.. J. DWIGHT, JR. 584. Melospiza georgiana (Lath.). SWAMP SPARROW. Ad. in summer. Crown chestnut-rufous; forehead black; a grayish line over the eye; a blackish line behind the eye; nape slaty gray with a few black streaks; feathers of the back broadly streaked with black and margined with rufous and cream-buff or ashy buff; wing-coverts rufous, the greater ones with black spots at their tips; rump rufous grayish brown, sometimes streaked with black; tail rufous grayish brown, the middle feathers darker along their shafts; throat and middle of the belly white, breast grayish, sides washed with pale grayish brown. Ad. in winter and Im. - Similar, but the top of the head streaked with black, rufous-brown, and grayish; nape less gray; breast washed with brownish. L., 5.89; W., 2·34; T., 2·32; Β., 46.