THE BIRDS OF NORTHERN THAILAND 561 



brown ; the sides of the throat, head, and neck white, except for the 

 lores, a narrow line passing beneath the eye and above the ear coverts, 

 and the lower half of the ear coverts, all of which are black; the 

 chin and center of the throat black; the remaining underparts whitish, 

 suffused with ashy on the breast and with buffy elsewhere (the flanks 

 and under tail coverts pure buff ) . Juveniles differ only in lacking the 

 black patch on the chin and throat. 



PASSER FLAVEOLUS Blyth 



Olive-crowned Sparrow 



Piasser] flaveolus Blyth, Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, vol. 13, 1844, pp. 946-947 

 (Arakan). 



Passer flaveolus, Gyldenstolpe, Kungl. Svenska Vet.-Akad. Handl., 1916, p. 29 

 (Khun Tan); Ibis, 1920, p. 458 ("Northern districts").— de Schauensee, 

 Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia, 1928, p. 559 (Chiang Mai) ; 1929, p. 560 

 (Chiang Mai) ; 1934, p. 236 (Chiang Mai ) .— Deignan, Journ. Siam Soc. Nat. 

 Hist. Suppl. 1931, p. 152 (Chiang Mai) ; 1936, p. 126 (Chiang Mai). 



This attractive bird has been collected only as Chiang Mai, Sala Mae 

 Tha, Khun Tan, and Phu Chae ; it is, however, probably locally com- 

 mon in the lowlands of all the northern provinces except Chiang Rai. 



On the Chiang Mai plain, the pretty olive-crowned sparrow is a 

 well-known resident of copses and the trees and bamboo that border 

 the ricefields; only occasionally is it seen in towns and then just at their 

 outskirts. After the breeding season it collects in bands of 100 or 

 more individuals (both old and young birds), which feed together in 

 the fields and on the roads and roost together at some favored grove 

 of trees with other similar flocks. Its song seems to be no more than a 

 tch' -tch, tch' -tch, tch' -tch, and the call note a chip, chip, chip (rather 

 softer than the corresponding note of the tree sparrow) ; at the winter 

 roosts, however, it is a very noisy species, chattering and churring 

 quite like other members of the genus. 



In our area, Passer flaveolus regularly breeds in trees, leaving the 

 cavities about buildings to the competing P. m. inalaccensis. The 

 breeding season at Chiang Mai runs from early in May to mid-July, by 

 which time flocks with many juveniles are frequent about the country- 

 side. A pair observed on May 15 were putting the finishing touches 

 on a huge, untidy, globular nest of coarse grass (with entrance at one 

 side), fastened in a crotch of a mai hwao (Butea frondosa) about 40 

 feet above ground. A similar structure, evidently holding young 

 birds, was found July 1 in a royal poinciana {Delonix regia) at an 

 elevation of 11 or 12 feet ; at a distance of only a few feet was a second 

 nest, the significance of which is unknown, since no others of the species 

 were noted in the tree. 



Nuptial males have the irides brown ; the bill black ; the rictus yel- 

 low ; the feet, toes, and claws dusky flesh ; the soles yellowish. Non- 



