SP. CHAR. Bill stout, quiscaline, the commissure scarcely sinuated; shorter than the head and the hind toe; the height nearly half length of culmen. Wing nearly an inch longer than the tail; the second quill longest; the first about equal to the third. Tail rounded and moderately graduated; the lateral feathers about .35 of an inch shorter. General color of male black, with lustrous green reflections everywhere except on the head and neck, which are glossed with purplish-violet. _Female_ much duller, of a light brownish anteriorly; a very faint superciliary stripe. Length about 10 inches; wing, 5.30; tail, 4.40. HAB. High Central Plains to the Pacific; south to Mexico. Pembina, Minn.; S. Illinois (Wabash Co.; R. RIDGWAY); Matamoras and San Antonio, Texas (breeds; DRESSER, Ibis, 1869, 493); Plateau of Mexico (very abundant, and resident; SUMICHRAST, M. B. S. I, 553). Autumnal specimens do not exhibit the broad rusty edges of feathers seen in _S. ferrugineus_. The females and immature males differ from the adult males in much the same points as _S. ferrugineus_, except that the “rusty” markings are less prominent and more grayish. The differences generally between the two species are very appreciable. Thus, in _S. cyanocephalus_, the bill, though of the same length, is much higher and broader at the base, as well as much less linear in its upper outline; the point, too, is less decurved. The size is every way larger. The purplish gloss, which in _ferrugineus_ is found on most of the body except the wings and tail, is here confined to the head and neck, the rest of the body being of a richly lustrous and strongly marked green, more distinct than that on the wings and tail of _ferrugineus_. In one specimen only, from Santa Rosalia, Mexico, is there a trace of purple on some of the wing and tail feathers. HABITS. This species was first given as a bird of our fauna by Mr. Audubon, in the supplementary pages of the seventh volume of his Birds of America. He met with it on the prairies around Fort Union, at the junction of the Yellowstone and the Missouri Rivers, and in the extensive ravines in that neighborhood, in which were found a few dwarfish trees and tall rough weeds or grasses, along the margin of scanty rivulets. In these localities he met with small groups of seven or eight of these birds. They were in loose flocks, and moved in a silent manner, permitting an approach to within some fifteen or twenty paces, and uttering a call-note as his party stood watching their movements. Perceiving it to be a species new to him, he procured several specimens. He states that they did not evince the pertness so usual to birds of this family, but seemed rather as if dissatisfied with their abode. On the ground their gait was easy and brisk. He heard nothing from them of the nature of a song, only a single _cluck_, not unlike that of the Redwing, between which birds and the _C. ferrugineus_ he was disposed to place this species.